Washington Irving

by Brian Jay Jones

  Irving arrived in London at six-thirty on the evening of May 28, and went immediately to the Covent Garden Theatre to catch the second performance of his and Payne's Charles II. As promised, Payne had ensured Irving's name appeared nowhere on the program, merely acknowledging a “literary friend.”49 Irving watched the performance in a box seat with Payne and a young widow Payne was wooing named Mary Shelley.

  Calling on Murray the following evening, Irving was delighted to learn the publisher would pay 1,500 guineas for Traveller. Murray had never even asked to see it. Now it was a mad sprint to the finish—and as Irving would soon find out, no book of his would be so plagued with problems as it moved toward publication.

  Irving spent ten days visiting the Fosters at their estate in Brickhill, as he reviewed proofs, made extensive revisions, and wrote new pieces, which was certain to drive his typesetter mad. While he enjoyed his reunion with the Fosters, the intimacy of 1823 was gone; he was a welcome friend and houseguest, but that was it. For one, Mr. Foster was now a presence, and his mundane talk of road paving was a far cry from the amateur theatricals Irving had staged with the Foster women in Dresden. The family was also more actively pious than Irving liked, and he was uncomfortable with their open displays of devotion. When an animated conversation between the Fosters and various evangelicals ended in a call for prayer, Irving's eyes rolled skyward—“All kneel down and pray,” he wrote caustically in his journal, and down he went, Flora Foster said later, “with an impatient gesture, and almost a shudder,” onto his knees.50

  In late July came word from Murray that Irving hadn't written enough to fill two octavo-sized volumes. As the proofs rolled off the printing press, he scrambled to fill the gap, lengthening some stories and hastily writing several new ones. “Vile Book work,” he groused to his journal.51

  On August 4 he had a long meeting with Murray to discuss a problem that had arisen when the publisher shared Irving's proofs with William Gifford, the stuffy editor of Murray's Quarterly Review and a longtime friend. In a dither, Gifford had written to Murray demanding changes in Irving's manuscript. The priggish Gifford had a number of complaints, but his biggest objection was that Irving had the nerve to “ridicule our provincial clergy, an exemplary body of men of whom he is completely ignorant.” Out of deference to Gifford, Murray requested Irving modify his manuscript.

  It was the first time Irving had faced censorship, and his reaction is telling: the private Irving complained, but the public Irving complied. Irving wrote Murray a long, mollifying letter, apologizing for any offense, however unintentional. His portrayals of clergymen, he said, were based on personal experience, but he told his publisher with a tinge of sarcasm that he would make the requested changes and would be more careful in the future “not to venture too far even when I have fact on my side.” He obediently inserted a too-sweet parson and his family into his work, then griped privately in his journal that he was “marring the story in compliance with the critique of Gifford.”52

  Irving was tired of the whole mess. He stayed in London only long enough to take in a few more theater performances, sitting in a private box at the Haymarket Theatre on August 10 with Mary Shelley and two other ladies, then collected his payment for Tales of a Traveller from Murray. On a rainy Friday the thirteenth, Irving left for Paris.

  “I never have had such fagging in altering, adding, and correcting,” he told Moore, “and I have been detained beyond all patience by the delays of the press. Yesterday, I absolutely broke away [from London], without waiting for the last sheets…. From the time I first started pen in hand on this work, it has been nothing but hard driving with me.” He asked Moore for his thoughts on Tales of a Traveller after its publication—unless, of course, Moore didn't like it, in which case Irving advised him to keep his mouth shut. “I am easily put out of humor with what I do,” he wrote sheep-ishly. It was just as well; Moore was unimpressed with Traveller.“Rather tremble for its fate,” he confided in his journal.53

  On August 15 Irving arrived in Paris. Peter remained in the rue Richelieu apartments, but Washington retired to new quarters in the quieter nearby village of Auteuil. Here, close to the Storrows, he waited for word on the reception of Tales of a Traveller. For the first time, he had confidence in his writing. “For my own part, I think there are in it some of the best things I have ever written,” he told his sister Catharine. “They may not be so highly polished… but they are touched off with a freer spirit, and are more true to life.”54

  On August 25, 1824, Murray published the two-volume Tales of a Traveller by Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Simultaneously, Moses Thomas released Traveller in the United States in four installments. The book sold rapidly; Irving's name alone was enough to keep copies moving. While Geoffrey Crayon, in his preface, “To the Reader,” claimed that writing the book “was no difficult matter,” Washington Irving had labored hard over nearly every word. This time the strain showed. And the critics—who had been waiting for the well-spoken Crayon to finally stutter—pounced.

  “I have been miserably disappointed,” wrote John G. Lockhart in a blistering review in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. The United States Literary Gazette agreed. “On the whole, we are not satisfied with these tales. Some of them, indeed, are quite respectable as productions of the light kind of literature, but… the public have been led to expect better things.” The Westminster Review thought that Crayon's usually elegant voice had become ingratiating. “He would strike his best passage in fear of losing the next invitation to dinner he may expect from Grosvenor Square.” Such an accusation must have stung, given that Irving, at Murray's request, had removed language that had been deemed offensive or inappropriate.55

  What hurt Irving most, however, was that reviewers didn't just trash the work, they rebuked him as well. “It is high time that Mr. Irving should begin to ask of himself a serious question,” Lockhart wrote in a schoolmasterly tone. “‘What is it that I am to be known by hereafter?’… nearly twenty years have passed since his first and as yet his best production, ‘the History of New York,’ made its appearance. He has most certainly made no progress in any one literary qualification since then.”56 Perhaps the most withering assessment came from the American side of the Atlantic. “No man in the Republic of Letters,” the New-York Mirror pronounced, “has been more overrated than Mr. Washington Irving.”57

  Irving was panned for the first time in his career, and the criticism cut him to the quick. Any thoughts he may have had of returning to America were abandoned under the weight of Traveller’s failure; there was no way he could return home under such a black cloud and what he was certain was a soiled reputation. “Feel dejected,” he confided in his journal after reading yet another negative review. He suffered from stomach cramps and insomnia, and began studying Spanish to keep himself occupied when sleep wouldn't come. “Full of doubts of Success of my work,” he wrote groggily.58

  His spirits chilled as Paris grew colder. “An indifferent night—,” he jotted in his journal in November, “awoke very early: depressed, dubious of myself & public.” He wrote a letter to Catharine full of regret at his chosen path in life, and urged his sister not to let her own children hone their imaginations at the expense of more practical activities.59

  By December he was feeling so sorry for himself that he couldn't even manage a few encouraging words to another aspiring writer, his eighteen-year-old nephew, Pierre Paris Irving—Ebenezer's oldest son, who sent his famous uncle copies of a small periodical to which he was contributing. Washington responded with a treatise on the hazards of a literary life, dripping with self-indulgent world-weariness: “I am sorry… to find you venturing into print at so early an age, as I consider it extremely disadvantageous…. The article you wrote in the periodical work for instance was very clever as to composition, and was all that could be expected from a writer of your age…. I hope, however, your literary vein has been but a transient one, and that you are preparing to establish your fortune and reputation on a better basis t
han literary success.”60 It is perhaps little wonder that Pierre Paris Irving eventually became a clergyman.

  In a December letter to Brevoort, Irving provided a frank but rambling assessment of his strengths, weaknesses, and aspirations as a writer:

  I should like to write occasionally for my amusement, and to have the power of throwing my writings either into my portfolio, or into the fire. I enjoy the first conception and first sketching down of my ideas; but the correcting and preparing them for the press is irksome, and publishing is detestable…. I fancy much of what I value myself upon in writing, escapes the observation of the great mass of my readers: who are intent more upon the story than the way in which it is told. For my part I consider a story merely as a frame on which to stretch my materials.61

  When it came to the critics, however, he couldn't bring himself to admit that he cared about what they had to say: “The fact is that I have kept myself so aloof from all clan ship in literature, that I have no allies among the scribblers for the periodical press…. However, as I do not read criticism good or bad, I am out of the reach of attack. If my writings are worth any thing they will out live temporary criticism; if not they are not worth caring about.”62

  Despite his glumness, Irving had reason to be pleased as he looked back on 1824. He had written Tales of a Traveller; had issued revised editions of Knickerbocker and Old Sal for Galignani; and had seen his play, Charles II, open to acclaim in London. Not a bad year—but overshadowing it all were the poor reviews of Traveller. His last journal entry for the year was suitably contemplative and self-pitying: “This has been a dismal day of depression &c and closes a year part of which has been full of sanguine hope; of social enjoyment; peace of mind, and health of body—and the latter part saddened by disappointments & distrust of the world & of myself; by sleepless nights & joyless days—May the coming year prove more thoroughly propitious.”63

  Unfortunately, worries over money made for a sleepless January 1825, and Irving was starting to lose patience with Payne, whose debtors, Irving told the playwright, “continually threaten to seize the furniture; and make my residence in the apartment very uncomfortable.” Further, he had been paying Payne's debts out of his own pocket and was no longer confident he would be reimbursed. In the end, though, he couldn't bring himself to completely give up on the wayward playwright. “If I cannot assist you with money, I am ready at any time to assist you in your endeavors to make money,” Irving wrote, “—and after all that is the best assistance that one friend can render another.”64

  He approached John Murray about writing a life of Cervantes, and continued to pitch his idea to adapt Arabian Nights. Both suggestions met with silence from Murray, who was no doubt regretting the 1,500 guineas he had invested, sight unseen, in Traveller. It was a mistake Murray would not make again. With his proposals ignored, Irving struggled for inspiration. “Thinking over project of American Work,” he wrote on February 5, though “low spirits” prevented him from writing anything.65 Instead he read the papers, attended the opera, and dined with Peter. As for Peter, his steamboat venture finally imploded in March, and he skulked to Castle Van Wart to look for new projects in which to invest other people's money.

  Irving's spirits brightened with the coming of spring. Learning that his earlier comments to Pierre Paris Irving had soundly discouraged the young man, he insisted that he had been taken out of context. His remarks “were rather meant to warn you for the future, not to censure you for the past.” His point, he stressed, had been to encourage his nephew to forsake “idle society” for good books and hard work. “Do not be impatient to enter in society & to make a figure in drawing rooms,” Irving wrote. “A man can seldom figure to any purpose until he has acquired the knowledge & experience of years.”66 It was good advice, though Irving wouldn't have followed it himself at age nineteen.

  In late April he dusted off the play about young Shakespeare he had outlined in 1823, and hoped inspiration would come. It didn't. “Wrote two or three pages,” he grumbled in his journal, “but was not in mood—could not summon force & spirit.”67 Writer's block had taken hold.

  Three days later came the meltdown.

  On a drizzly Friday morning, Irving tried briefly to write, but felt such an “unconquerable lassitude” that he collapsed on his sofa, his eyelids heavy. “Unrefreshed feeling,” he noted, “as if I had not slept enough.” He walked to Galignani's to sort through the newly arrived stack of English and American newspapers. In the pages of the New-York Mirror was a scalding review of Tales of a Traveller: “It is suggested that Mr. Washington Irving's new work would sell more rapidly if the Booksellers would alter the Title, and call it ‘STORIES FOR CHILDREN’ by a Baby Six Feet High, instead of Tales of a Traveller.” Irving was furious. “It is hard to be stabbd in the back by ones own kin when attacked in front by strangers,” he scrawled angrily in his journal. “No matter—,” he continued in vengeful tones, “my countrymen may regret some day or other that they turnd from me with such caprice, the moment foes abroad assailed me.”68

  “To me,” he told Brevoort years later, “it is always ten times more gratifying to be liked than to be admired; and I confess to you, though I am a little too proud to confess it to the world, the idea that the kindness of my countrymen toward me was withering, caused me for a long time the most dreary depression of spirits and disheartened me from making any literary mentions.”69

  “Intolerably heavy and torpid all Evg & day,” he recorded on May 5. Days later, he was scribbling angrily at his “project of American work.” He labored over them, on and off, for nearly a year, producing pieces on American behavior, character, education, and national prejudices. Given his mood, it's likely these essays reflected his bitterness with American critics and disenchantment with American readers. He later destroyed them, perhaps recognizing that such a vindictive appearance in print might irreparably damage his reputation.70 At the moment, however, the exercise was cathartic.

  He continued to be concerned about Peter, still sulking in Birmingham, and was determined to do whatever he could to ensure his brother's financial independence, even if it meant carrying Peter on his back. Washington's money from The Sketch Book had been all but consumed by the steamboat venture, and while Bracebridge Hall had sold well, the relative failure of Tales of a Traveller had forced him to rely on his past profits. But he was running out of money; if he meant to support Peter, he would have to earn enough for both of them, and quickly. Once again, Peter had ideas on how Washington might make that happen.

  On his brother's advice—with the help and encouragement of an American businessman named George Myers and a shadowy acquaintance referred to only as “Mr. Jones”—Washington agreed to speculate in a Bolivian copper mine. It was a shaky proposition from the start, but he was confident he had at last found a regular source of income for Peter, and purchased fifty shares in the mine at £23 per share, for a total cost of about $100,000 today. “[Myers] has received letters… from his partner in America giving the most satisfactory accounts of the mine,” Washington told Storrow. “Altogether, the intelligence is very encouraging.” It was also wrong—and Washington soon saw his earnings from Brace-bridge and Traveller sucked down an unproductive hole in South America.71

  As much as Irving regretted the loss, he never questioned Peter's judgment. Just as William and Ebenezer never blamed Peter when their Liverpool offices had collapsed under his mismanagement, Washington never held him responsible for gambling away his literary profits on one ill-advised scheme after another. “Brotherhood,” Washington said later, “is a holy alliance made by God and imprinted in our hearts, and we should adhere to it with religious faith. The more kindly and scrupulously we observe its dictates, the happier for us.”72 Fortunately for Peter, the Irving brothers always put blood ahead of bankruptcy.

  Even though he had picked up a stalker of sorts, who took great delight in mailing Irving his bad reviews, his spirits were reviving. But a July 31 offer from Archibald Constable—
now reconciled with John Murray after a fifteen-year estrangement—to produce a biography of George Washington sent him into a panic. “It would require a great deal of reading and research,” he told Constable, “and that too much of a troublesome and irksome kind…. I feel myself quite incapable of executing any idea of the task. It is one that I dare not attempt lightly. I stand in too great awe of it.”73 The suggestion was shelved—for now.

  In early August John Howard Payne arrived in Paris for a meeting with Stephen Price, a talent agent Irving had recommended as a potential business partner. Before meeting with Price, Payne pulled Irving aside to have a frank conversation over dinner.

  For more than a year, Payne had been actively pursuing Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the attractive twenty-seven-year-old author of Frankenstein and the widow of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Following Shelley's death in Italy in 1822, Mary had returned to England to be near her father, the novelist and anarchist William Godwin, to write, and to care for her young son. Her friends encouraged the single mother to socialize more, and sometime in mid-1824, Mrs. Shelley—as nearly everyone referred to her—became acquainted with Payne.

  For a while, the two traded casual letters and invitations, drinking tea in her rooms in Kentish Town, and strolling on the Strand. Within no time, Payne had fallen in love with her, singing her praises in long, fawning letters. Flattered yet nervous, Mrs. Shelley kept the playwright just at arm's length. “I know how entirely your imagination creates the admired as well as the admiration,” she told Payne. In such a fashion the two had continued to see each other for the past several months.74

  None of this was news to Irving. He had met Mrs. Shelley several times, and had even seen her and Payne together in May 1824, as they sat in their box at Covent Garden for a performance of Charles II. But there was more. In late June Payne had been invited to dinner at the Godwin home in Gower Place. As he walked Mary back to Kentish Town after dinner, they had a frank conversation in which Payne learned that Mrs. Shelley had developed something of a crush on Irving. “She said you had interested her more than any one she had seen since she left Italy,” Payne told Irving, his eyes emerald with jealousy, “that you were gentle and cordial, and that she longed for friendship with you. I rallied her a little upon the declaration, and at first she fired at my mentioning that she talked as if she were in love. Upon her reply, I answered, ‘What! Would you make a plaything of Mr. I[rving]?’”75