Washington Irving

by Brian Jay Jones

  Irving was politically savvy enough to recognize that the debate over nullification was more than just an intellectual exercise on states’ rights. It went to the very heart of the structure and intent of the Constitution, and Irving wasn't certain the document could withstand the assault. As Clay and Calhoun worked on a compromise tariff bill, Irving speculated to Peter on the disastrous effect a botched agreement could have on the country. “I hope such a bill may be devised and carried as will satisfy the moderate part of the nullifiers,” he wrote, “but I confess I see so many elements of sectional prejudice, hostility, and selfishness stirring and increasing in activity and acrimony in this country, that I begin to doubt strongly of the long existence of the general union.”42

  By the beginning of March, Clay and Calhoun had their compromise, proposing a gradual lowering of tariffs in exchange for South Carolina's withdrawal of its nullification ordinance. With some deft political maneuvering, both the compromise and the Force Bill were passed by Congress, and Jackson signed both bills on March 2, two days before he and Van Buren were inaugurated. (South Carolina would have the last laugh, declaring Jackson's Force Bill null and void, before repealing their Ordinance of Nullification under the terms of the tariff agreement.) “Nullification is dead,” Jackson said, but “the next pretext will be the negro, or slavery question.”43 For now, the Union held.

  The drama over, Irving headed back toward New York, stopping first in Baltimore for three weeks to call on a new acquaintance, John Pendleton Kennedy. A disinterested lawyer, part-time politician, and aspiring novelist, Kennedy was something of an Irving wannabe. Kennedy's first novel, Swallow Barn, written under the pseudonym “Mark Littleton,” was essentially Bracebridge Hall set in the American South. Kennedy's book had its fans; in fact, Irving counted himself as one of them, and had written the Marylander an appreciative letter. Kennedy became one of Irving's most trusted advisers—he served a similar advisory role to an up-and-coming young Baltimore writer named Edgar Allan Poe—and Kennedy and his wife would be regular visitors at Sunnyside. At the moment, however, Kennedy was merely another in Irving's growing circle of literary friends and admirers.

  By April 3, 1833—his fiftieth birthday—Irving was in New York, home after an absence of nearly seven months. During that time, the letters, honors, and invitations had continued to pile up in Ebenezer's parlor. Sifting through the mail, Irving learned to his amusement that he had been awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by Harvard—yet another honorific for New York's worst attorney. “To merit such rewards from my country is the dearest object of my ambition,” he wrote to Harvard president Josiah Quincy, with just a trace of a smile, “but, conscious as I am of my imperfections, I cannot but feel that my Countrymen are continually over-paying me.”44

  In fact, his countrymen couldn't get enough of him. While he remained wary of official public displays, Irving was always happy to accept private invitations from friends, admirers, politicians, actors, and anyone else who wouldn't ask him to make a speech. Consequently, his first weeks back in New York were a blur—and Irving loved it. “The period that has passed since my arrival… has been one of the greatest and mostly delightful excitement I have ever experienced,” he told Peter. “Wherever I go, too, I am received with a cordiality, I may say an affection, that keeps my heart full and running over.”45

  Irving clearly owned American hearts; all they wanted in return was a new book. In this, however, Irving was bound to disappoint; he was being pulled in too many directions to settle into the quiet he needed to successfully wield his pen. “Time and mind are cut up with me like chopped hay,” he told Peter, “and I am good for nothing, and shall be good for nothing for some time to come, so much am I harassed by the claims of society.”46 Writing was very much on his mind, so Irving responded as he usually did when the threat of work loomed before him: he went on vacation. For two weeks in September, he and Martin and John Van Buren traveled in an open carriage from Albany, New York, to Communipaw, New Jersey, a reprise of the tour of central England the three had taken together in 1831.

  Irving was delighted with the early leg of the trip, when they toured Kinderhook, Van Buren's hometown and the place where Irving had spent some of the bleakest, yet most productive moments of his life. Here Irving visited with Brom Van Alstyne, the inspiration for the character of Brom Bones who had terrorized poor Ichabod Crane, and the original Ichabod Crane himself, his old friend Jesse Merwin. Perhaps the vice president cocked a curious eyebrow as they passed the Van Ness manor where Irving had written most of A History of New York in 1808; in 1839, Van Buren purchased the old Van Ness home and lived there until his death in 1862.

  During their tour, Irving and the vice president talked casually of politics and of Jackson's still-shaky Cabinet. There was discontent in the president's new Cabinet over issues relating to the Second Bank of the United States. Jackson was against it; others in his Cabinet—most notably Louis McLane—were for it. The president respected McLane's disagreement, but McLane didn't know when to stop pushing Jackson on the issue. Consequently, McLane was transferred from his post as treasury secretary to the office of secretary of state. McLane and the president feuded anew, this time over France's failure to comply with the terms of an 1832 treaty. There was speculation that McLane was quitting, so in late September, Irving set out for Washington, D.C., to gauge his friend's mood and, if necessary, talk him out of resigning.

  He found McLane in surprisingly good spirits and determined to remain at his post, despite his friction with the president. There was another surprise in D.C.: suddenly, Irving was motivated to write. As he hunched over the desk in his Capitol Hill apartment, even he admitted “it is an odd place and time for a man to amuse himself with literary avocations, but it shows how little I am of a politician.”47

  There was more to it than this. As usual, nothing sparked life into Irving's pen faster than the threat of looming financial hardship. This time, a number of his investments—made under the guidance of business managers Ebenezer and John Treat—were doing poorly. Washington reassured Peter that any financial losses could be recovered by profits from his existing copyrights; however, under the terms of the agreement Brevoort and Ebenezer had negotiated in 1828, Carey & Lea still owned a limited copyright to Irving's first four books until 1835. Until then, Irving would either have to make do with his existing funds, or write a new book. There was really no choice. Irving still wanted to buy the Van Tassell property, and he wanted to build a new house. To do that, he needed money. The pen scratched away. “I am, as you know, dammed up by the necessity (or fancied necessity) of producing a work upon American subjects before I can give vent to the other materials that have been accumulating upon me,”48 he told Peter—and he was right. American readers had had enough of elegant musings on England and Spain; they expected a book on American themes.

  Irving settled back into Ebenezer's home on Bridge Street to spend the winter “in a course of regular literary occupation” in the relative quiet of his brother's parlor. Even as he began writing in earnest and attempted to refuse most invitations, there were still distractions: a new opera house had opened nearby. Unlike Paris, where the street noise had been an annoyance, Irving found the whoops and clattering from the crowds on Broadway oddly reassuring. “The city overflows with strangers, more than any city of the same size in the world,” he told Peter. “The theater is constantly crowded, and is a perfect gold mine.”49 Despite his best efforts, his writing slowed to a trickle in the early months of 1834.

  Instead, Irving dawdled with Van Buren, continuing their conversations about the fate of Louis McLane, still unhappy in Jack-son's Cabinet. The vice president assured Irving that McLane would remain at his post, although privately Van Buren wasn't trying very hard to persuade McLane to stay. He had a hard-line Jacksonian and longtime ally, Georgia senator John Forsyth, standing ready to assume McLane's position. McLane finally submitted his resignation in June—and unbeknownst to Irving, Van Buren had prac
tically pushed McLane out the door.

  Irving's work on his American book continued through the summer, even as he split his time between obligations to family and friends. He was generally pleased with his progress, though he fretted that he would be unable to meet his fans’ inflated expectations. He hoped the book would be worth their wait.

  As Irving closed in on the last chapters, another American project suddenly fell into his lap. For years, friends and admirers had regularly approached him with book ideas. His brothers urged him to write a novel. Constable suggested a biography of George Washington. Henry Brevoort recommended an extended biography of Hernán Cortés. The suggestion of this particular admirer, however, could not be ignored.

  “John Jacob Astor is extremely desirous of having a work written on the subject of his settlement of Astoria,”50 Washington wrote to Pierre M. Irving in September. The millionaire Astor had amassed his fortune largely in the fur trade, establishing companies across the American frontier, including one at Fort Astoria, on the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest. Now retired from the fur trade, Astor thought an account of his company's exploits in the West was one worth telling. Who better to tell the story of the richest man in the United States than the nation's most famous writer?

  Irving was a longtime friend of Astor, but shrewdly recognized that Astor's purpose in asking for the history was motivated by ego, not enlightenment. The millionaire wanted “something that might take with the reading world,” Washington told Pierre, “and secure to him the reputation of having originated the enterprise and founded the colony that are likely to have such important results in the history of commerce and colonization.” Further, he explained, Astor was now in “want of occupation and amusement, and thinks he may find something of both in the progress of this work.”51

  Curiously, Irving decided to play hard to get. Astor left his journals, letters, articles, and other documents entirely at Irving's disposal, and was willing to pay “liberally” for the project. Irving needed the money for his house and property, but he demurred, telling Astor he was too busy to do it himself. There was another, more driving consideration: despite his desire to appear in print again and the obvious financial attractiveness of the offer, he was simply too lazy to sort through Astor's voluminous piles of letters and documents. He had done that for his Columbus biography, and it had nearly wrecked him. At fifty-one years old, he wasn't willing to commit another year of his life to a densely researched biography.

  Instead, he proposed to Astor that he hire Pierre as a literary researcher and assistant, to sort through the materials and put together a rough, notated outline, on which Washington would then put the “finishing hand.” Despite his display of reluctance, Washington wanted the easy money this project promised. After a quick discussion with Astor, he told Pierre the millionaire was willing to pay the young man “whatever might be deemed proper for your services.”52

  Pierre agreed to do it for $2,000, on condition that the research require no more than a year of his time and that he receive no share of the profits of the book. Relieved, Washington convinced Astor to up Pierre's commission to $3,000—about $75,000 today. Astor not only agreed, but insisted Pierre live with him in his winter residence in New York while the young man worked.

  Washington already had a strong sense of the book's overall feel and structure. “My present idea is to call the work by the general name of Astoria—,” he told Pierre, “… under this head to give not merely a history of the great colonial and commercial enterprise, and of the fortunes of his colony, but a body of information concerning the whole region beyond the Rocky Mountains…. I think, in this way, a rich and varied work may be formed, both entertaining and instructive.”53 In other words, he hoped to do for Astor precisely what he had done for Columbus—write a factually accurate biography that would also be accessible to casual readers.

  It was all too much for another famous American. “He is to be Astor's biographer!” sputtered James Fenimore Cooper. “Columbus and John Jacob Astor! I dare say Irving will make the last the greatest man!”54

  13

  Sunnyside

  1834–1842

  He who has to fag his pen for a livelihood, has very little inclination to take it up when he is not driven thereto by sheer necessity.

  —Washington Irving to Sarah Van Wart, December 1840

  IN NOVEMBER 1834, as Pierre Irving began his research for Astoria in Astor's Hell Gate home, Washington completed his manuscript of A Tour on the Prairies, his first book since A History of New York to be entirely conceived and written in the United States. Despite his best efforts to manage the hype, expectations were running high. “I feel reluctant to let it go before the public,” he confessed to Peter. “So much has been said in the papers about my tour to the West, and the work I was preparing on the subject, that I dread the expectations formed, especially as what I have written is extremely simple, and by no means striking in its details.”1

  Since his return to America more than two years before, friends, fans, and readers had constantly reassured him that they still held him in high regard and never doubted his patriotism—just the sort of stroking his fragile ego needed. Still, Irving had his share of critics and skeptics—like James Fenimore Cooper, critical of America yet fervently protective of it, who sneered that Irving's patriotism was a ruse. As far as Cooper was concerned, Irving had turned his back on his merchant-class roots and ingratiated himself with the English upper crust. Worse, Cooper believed Irving had flattered his way around society, hobnobbing with artists, politicians, and millionaires—the snooty American aristocracy that Cooper so loathed. According to such cynics, Irving had frittered away the goodwill of his American readers by catering to sycophants and wannabes. In their view, if he wanted to win back the affections of Americans, he had much work to do.

  Irving withered at the thought of such criticism, and worried whether Prairies could stand on its own merits. For the next several weeks, the finished manuscript sat untouched as he mulled over the best way to ensure a positive reception. By early January he had what he thought was a surefire solution: he would publish A Tour on the Prairies as part of a multivolume collection under his Geoffrey Crayon pseudonym. The device was probably unnecessary, but the security of Geoffrey Crayon's name steeled his nerves enough to let the manuscript go.

  In February 1835 he mailed Aspinwall the proofs for ATour on the Prairies, volume one of a collection Irving was calling The Crayon Miscellany. His asking price for the first volume was 500 guineas—about $3,000—but Irving was prepared to take less, advising Aspinwall to simply “make such bargain as you can” with any publisher that would publish it as quickly as possible. In early April Aspinwall informed an increasingly nervous Irving that he had landed a reputable British publisher for The Crayon Miscellany: John Murray.2

  Despite the scuffle over The Alhambra and Mahomet that had put Irving and Murray at odds in 1831, Aspinwall had rightly gauged that 1835 was a good time to reconcile with the Prince of Booksellers. Murray's fortunes had improved, and he was receptive to renewing his relationship with the writer who, regardless of his mood swings and ego, was still one of the most successful he had published. But Murray had learned to pay lower prices for copyrights, and wasn't about to permit even a proven writer like Irving to determine his own advance. He refused Irving's 500-guinea asking price for A Tour on the Prairies, but agreed to pay £400 up front.

  It was a reality check, but Irving was delighted with the arrangement. “I am glad to be once more in dealings with Murray,” he told Peter, “The price is not so high as I used to get, but there has been a great change in the bookselling trade of late years.”3 Murray had made his point, but Irving had, too; they needed each other. The hard feelings were gone, and Irving even allowed the first volume of Miscellany to go to press in London with minimal input or meddling.

  That wasn't the case for the U.S. edition. Nervous about his American reappearance, Irving continued tinkering with his manu
script until the last minute, inserting an introduction in which he discussed his seventeen-year stay in Europe, his decision to write a book on an American subject, and the still-touchy issue of his allegiance to his country: “I make no boast of my patriotism. I can only say, that, as far as it goes, it is no blind attachment…. I have seen what is brightest and best in foreign lands, and have found, in every nation, enough to love and honour; yet, with all these recollections living in my imagination and kindling in my heart, I look round with delightful exultation upon my native land, and feel that, after all my ramblings about the world, I can be happiest at home.”4 They were sincere words. But the fact that they were missing from the British edition only fueled speculation that Irving was pandering to audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.

  A Tour on the Prairies was published in the United States by Carey, Lea & Blanchard on April 11, a month after its London debut. It was Irving's long-awaited American book—and to many American readers, the wait was worth it.

  “Irving on the prairies!” bubbled an effusive reviewer in Western Monthly Magazine. “Washington Irving among the honey-bees, the wild horses, and Osages of the frontier!… It is one of the best of the author's productions.” In the pages of the North American Review, Edward Everett lauded Irving for at last addressing an American theme, and hailed the book as a “sentimental journey, a romantic excursion, in which nearly all the elements of several different kinds of writing are beautifully and gaily blended.” The public's enthusiasm was reflected in strong sales, as demand drove the book into a second printing. By November it had sold more than 8,000 copies, netting Irving a generous $2,400. The reception in England was just as encouraging, and Leslie mailed Irving packets of approving reviews. “We hope,” sighed one, “that this will not be the last of the Crayon Miscellanies.”5