Washington Irving

by Brian Jay Jones

  The only real question now was, Who would have the queen's hand in marriage? The duke of Cadiz remained the leading candidate, Irving told Upshur in an August dispatch, but there was also speculation the Queen Mother was planning to spirit her daughter away to the Basque region and marry her to one of Philippe's sons. Regardless of the queen's choice of husband, Irving concluded, she was certain to make one or some of the factions unhappy, “and her very throne may be shaken in the violent convulsions which are likely to arise.”53

  His legs started to bother him in early September, and his physician again ordered him to kinder climes to help the inflammation in his ankles. This time, Irving didn't resist. Leaving the legation in Hamilton's capable hands, he rode for Paris and the welcoming arms of Sarah Storrow. Hoping to avoid the society that had bogged down his last visit, he begged Sarah not to let anyone know he was coming. “I come as an invalid,” he warned her. A week later, he collapsed onto the sofa in the Storrows’ apartments, his legs still sore and swollen, but happy to be surrounded by family once again.54

  Against his better judgment, Irving lingered in Paris for nearly eight weeks. Though largely housebound, he found it impossible to tear himself away from Sarah and her daughter. Yet he knew matters required his attention in Madrid. “Questions may arise,” he admitted to Ebenezer, “and claims to sovereignty between warring parties in these revolutionary times, in respect to which I wish to take upon myself the responsibility of deciding.” Privately he worried that critics would accuse him of abandoning his post. “The archives of the Legation will testify that the business of the Mission has never been neglected,” he fussed to Brevoort, and rightly asserted that he had remained at his post against doctor's orders, even at the expense of his health. “I do not pretend to any great skill as a diplomatist,” he said finally, “but in whatever situation I am placed in life, when I doubt my skill I endeavor to make up for it, by conscientious assiduity.”55

  At the end of November, with his legs still aching—and worried that physical inactivity was making him fat—Irving set out for Madrid. “This indisposition has been a sad check upon all my plans,” he complained to Henry Brevoort. Between the illness and his diplomatic duties, he hadn't written since January. “A year… has now been completely lost to me; and a precious year at my time of life,” he wrote. “The Life of Washington; and indeed all my literary tasks have remained suspended; and my pen has remained idle.”56

  He arrived in the Spanish capital on December 1. In his three-month absence, the young queen had been formally declared of age. Irving cautiously reminded the diplomatic corps not to be too dazzled by her title. Ultimately, the queen was still only a girl of thirteen, and he thought it a shame that so young a woman had to “exercise the functions of a Sovreign, while her mind is immature; her character unfixed.”57

  There were changes in his legation; with Carson Brevoort's departure came the arrival of Jasper Livingston. Jasper, the son of Irving's former law teacher, Supreme Court justice Henry Brock-holst Livingston, was another well-spoken young gentleman, cut from the same cloth as Hamilton. “I am altogether much pleased with him,” Irving said.58

  The pain in his legs made it increasingly difficult to perform his duties, but Irving pushed on, hosting a dinner in January 1844 for new diplomats and a few select members of the Spanish nobility. The gathering was a success, but it left him exhausted. “If only I could exercise my pen I should be quite another being,” he wrote, “as then, besides being agreeably employed, I should be looking forward to an improvement in my pecuniary means.”59 Burnt out, he requested extended leave from his post in early summer.

  Late that winter, in a dramatic turnaround, the Queen Mother decided to end her self-imposed exile in France. In a masterfully choreographed ceremony, the queen and her sister were to ride out to meet their mother on the road just beyond the palace at Aranjuez—and the entire diplomatic corps were expected to be there to witness the reunion. At this point, Irving was nearly crippled, barely able to move much beyond his salon and bedroom. Fortunately, the Albuquerques took pity on him, arranging for several teams of horses to carry him to Aranjuez, and securing him a comfortable room in the house where the diplomatic corps would be staying.

  On the day of the event, Irving rode out in a carriage with the Mexican minister, then hobbled downhill on foot to get a good look at what he was sure would be a tearful reunion. He was not disappointed—even the sternest of soldiers “absolutely wept like children”—but he had worn himself out. After standing among the ministers to be presented to the queen, he left early and fell into bed.60

  In a feeble attempt to regain his spirits, he picked up his pen and made a halfhearted attempt at writing. It was no use. “I have to exercise the pen sparingly, as I find literary excitement produces irritation in my complaint,” he told Pierre in disappointment. Under Pierre's careful management, Washington's investments were finally beginning to pay dividends, but Washington remained convinced it would never be enough to unshackle him from his pen. “I do not see any likelihood of realizing Sufficient to enable me to return home and be independent of the fagging of the pen,” he said. In the meantime, he was determined to keep his government job as long as he could. “If it were not for diplomacy,” he admitted, “I do not know what would become of us.”61

  Diplomacy proved difficult, however, when his own government failed to provide him with good information. Called before Prime Minister Luis Bravo in April 1844 to discuss the fracturing relations between the United States, England, and Cuba, Irving could only stammer out vague assurances. He had been caught off guard by the question, and to his annoyance, most of Bravo's intelligence had come secondhand from the French legation. Part of the problem, as Irving had pointed out a year before, was a lack of constancy in the State Department. It was a fair charge, as the Tyler administration had gone through several secretaries of state. Upshur was Irving's third boss at the State Department in two years, following the resignation of Webster and the death of Legaré in 1843. In February 1844 a freak explosion on board the USS Princeton killed Upshur, Navy Secretary Thomas Gilmer, and four others. To fill the vacancy at the head of the State Department, President Tyler lured John C. Calhoun, recently resigned from the U.S. Senate, into the secretary's chair.

  Irving was a longtime admirer of Calhoun, but he had grown impatient with the revolving door at the State Department and was in no mood to allow Calhoun time to get up to speed on the issues. His first dispatch to Calhoun started in medias res: “Political affairs here wear a tranquil Surface under the domination of martial law,” read the dramatic opening line. He described the growing animosity between General Narváez and Prime Minister Bravo, jealousies in court, and more potential suitors for the queen. Irving again demanded timely direction from the U.S. government. His own want of information, he told Calhoun indignantly, made him look dishonest.62

  The U.S. secretary of state position, however, was only slightly more stable than that of Spanish prime minister. Shortly after Irving's missive to Calhoun, Bravo's ministry collapsed and Narváez was elevated in his place. Narváez wasn't quite the empty suit Irving had considered Bravo, but neither was he the dynamic Espartero. Irving had already seen so many regents and prime ministers wrecked by the system that it was difficult to muster up much enthusiasm for this one. “I am inclined to think General Narváez honest, though limited, in his political views,” was the best he could do. “How long he may continue,” Irving speculated, “it is impossible to judge; reverses being so frequent and sudden in this government, where danger always keeps on a par with elevation, and where men apparently rise but to fall.”63

  Irving's presence was regularly required at the royal palace for yet another reception, levee, or birthday party. However, in his condition, standing in the long queue of ministers in the Hall of Ambassadors for hours on end was nearly impossible. While he was waiting for the queen at one ceremony, a court attendant took pity on him and steered him toward a statue with a low
pedestal where he could sit until the entrance of the royal party. Unfortunately, once the queen arrived, he was expected to stand for several hours while the long lines of courtiers, clergy, and military filed past the royal family. It was too much; his legs on fire, Irving hobbled out of the ceremony early. He was so embarrassed by his premature exit that he sent the foreign minister an apologetic letter. He was more determined than ever to secure from Calhoun the extended leave of absence he needed to recover his health.

  Adding to his misery, in May Hamilton decided to leave the legation and return home. To Irving, his secretary's departure was “a perfect bereavement.” Hamilton had been his right hand both in diplomatic and personal affairs, and Irving had come to regard the young man as family. He missed him terribly. “There is an inexpressible loneliness in my mansion, and its great saloons seem uncommonly empty and silent,” he lamented to Sarah Storrow. “I feel my heart choking me as I walk about and miss Hamilton from the places and seats he used to occupy.”64

  Jasper Livingston had been cleared by the Senate to take over as the legation's secretary, but Irving's original “diplomatic family”—his boys—were gone. The thought made him long for his own family even more, and his heart ached for the hearth at Sunnyside. He was tiring of Spain:

  I am wearied and at times heartsick of the wretched politics of this country…. The last ten or twelve years of my life, passed among sordid speculators in the United States, and political adventurers in Spain, has shewn me so much of the dark side of human nature, that I begin to have painful doubts of my fellow man; and look back with regret to the confiding period of my literary career, when, poor as a rat, but rich in dreams, I beheld the world through the medium of my imagination and was apt to believe men as good as I wished them to be.65

  That spring the queen and her mother went to Barcelona for an extended soak in the baths. Isabella suffered from excessively dry skin, which, Irving said, often made her look “mealy,” and required her to seek regular treatment. Gossips whispered, incorrectly, that the queen was making secret arrangements to marry one of Philippe's sons. Irving had initially planned to follow, hoping to learn the real story and lounge in a bath or two, but he changed his mind at the last moment, citing the heat, difficulty of travel, and the expense. At the end of June, however, he received two letters from President Tyler for the queen, one congratulating her on reaching the age of majority, the other offering consolation for the recent death of an aunt. Protocol demanded he deliver them as quickly as possible. More than a little annoyed, Irving set out for Barcelona, four hundred dusty miles away.

  Irving had visited Barcelona briefly in 1829, on his way from Granada to London, but he had forgotten just how beautiful it was. Set against the Mediterranean, Barcelona was far more lush than the relatively barren Madrid, with fields of grain and olives stretching to the horizon.66 It offered good walks, lively cafés, and a respectable opera house—all of which Irving immediately enjoyed. Indeed, the city was so pleasant that after delivering his official correspondence to the queen, he decided to linger, abandoning his small hotel room in favor of the large, comfortable casa of Don Pablo Anguera, an associate of Henry Van Wart.

  Irving liked Anguera's home, with its painted fresco ceilings and fashionable furniture, but during his month in Barcelona, he practically lived at the opera houses. So did his fellow ministers. “Indeed the theatre is the nightly place of meeting of the diplomatic corps and various members of the Court,” Irving wrote, “and there is great visiting from box to box.” The July weather was hot, but the breezes off the Mediterranean were cool, and the change in climate did Irving good. His legs were nearly healed, and he strolled daily in Las Ramblas, Barcelona's most fashionable public pedestrian street. He even managed to walk several miles from the mountains back into the city after a dinner at the Brazilian consul's.

  He was feeling so good, in fact, that when Calhoun wrote in mid-July granting him a two-month leave of absence, Irving had almost forgotten he had requested it. He admitted to Calhoun that he was “nearly recovered,” but never one to look a presidential gift horse in the mouth, hinted that he was “still… subject to slight returns of it if I indulge too closely in sedentary and mental occupation.”67 Promising to be back at his post by October, he left Barcelona for France.

  Irving spent a week with Sarah Storrow—to his delight, she had given birth to her second child only twelve days before his arrival—then traveled to England for an extended stay in Birmingham, where Sarah Van Wart was recovering from a stroke. “I had anticipated a very melancholy meeting with our dear Sister, expecting to find her a mere wreck,” he told Catharine, “but was greatly surprised and rejoiced to find her looking as well as when I last saw her.” Still, it was hard to watch as his sister, only three years his senior, was pushed around the gardens in a wheelchair. “I doubt of her ever recovering perfectly,” he admitted to Catharine.68

  Three weeks later, Irving was back in Paris, where his skin condition flared again. He sought comfort at the baths, but his illness kept him confined indoors. “I am stagnant, absolutely stagnant,” he complained to Livingston, who was still managing their affairs in Spain. Until Irving recovered his health in Paris, Livingston was in charge in Madrid. “It is a great satisfaction to me to think the Legation will be so well represented,” he told the young man warmly.69

  To his credit, Irving continued to work, reading dispatches from Calhoun and talking with Ashbel Smith, the minister from the Republic of Texas, about the possibility of the United States annexing Texas. While Smith fretted that he considered annexation unlikely, Irving wasn't so sure. “I cannot persuade myself that the Texians consider the case hopeless,” he told Calhoun, especially “seeing the encreasing popularity of the question in the United States.”70 In that, Irving was right; the annexation of Texas had become a defining issue of the 1844 U.S. presidential race between Democrat James K. Polk, who was for the annexation, and Whig Henry Clay, who was against it.

  By late November, with his legs mostly healed, Irving was back at his post in time to learn of Polk's narrow victory over Clay. While John Tyler and the president-elect had similar views on Spanish relations, Irving's family worried that he would be replaced by a Polk appointee. Irving tried to reassure them of his confidence in Polk. “From all that I can learn he is likely to make a very good president,” he wrote. “He is well educated; of highly respectable talents, experienced in public life, and of most unexceptionable private character.” Privately, however, he was worried he might be dismissed before he was ready. “If I am spared in office a year or so more,” he wrote, “I hope to get my literary concerns in such a state of forwardness as to be able to return home with the means of providing for those dependant upon me.”71

  In the meantime, he still had the job, and he was determined to make the most of it, hosting three diplomatic dinners in a span of five weeks. As a regular stream of guests enjoyed easy conversation over dinner at his large round table, he soon discovered to his surprise that an invitation to dinner at the American minister's was becoming a mark of distinction among the diplomatic corps. “My dinners are well cooked and well served, and I find have a very good name,” he reported proudly. “My invitations certainly are always accepted.”72

  Irving's dinners weren't the only hot ticket in Madrid that winter; grand balls were thrown with almost alarming regularity, each more elaborate than the last as the newly empowered—or, in some cases, reempowered—Spanish aristocracy competed to see who could host the most dazzling event. “I am dissipated officially,” Irving chuckled, “as I have to attend Court fetes of all kinds, and dinner and balls given by personages in office.” He found it all rather boring. “I have grown too old or too wise for all that,” he wrote. But he thought some good had come of the hectic social schedule; after being thrown together so often, the diplomatic corps had solidified into a tight circle of friends, meeting regularly for card games and private dinners.73

  To his surprise, both he and the Sp
anish people were warming to Narváez. Spanish women liked the general for his good looks, Spanish men admired his fiery temper, and Irving thought him “one of the most striking characters; if not the most striking, that has risen to power in Spain during the long course of her convulsions.” He was disappointed, therefore, to find Narváez and the crafty Queen Mother at odds, arguing over the role of the clergy in government and almost everything else. “I look on the position of Narváez as perilous in the extreme,” Irving wrote, “and I should not be surprised to see him suddenly toppled down by some unlooked for catastrophe.”74

  Irving was determined to resist the countless invitations that poured into the legation, and by late February 1845 he was writing in earnest. “I continue busy with my pen,” he said, “and am happy to find that my literary application is not attended with any return of my malady.” It was a relief to be writing again—and with each stroke of his pen, he felt the weight of his government job slowly lifted from his shoulders. If recalled by Polk, he could still write for a living, though the thought of doing so alarmed him. “I used to think I would take warning by the fate of writers who kept on writing until they ‘wrote themselves down,’ and that I would retire while still in the freshness of my powers,” he mused to Sarah Storrow, “but you see circumstances have obliged me to change my plans, and I am likely to write on until the pen drops from my hand.”75

  With spring came warmer temperatures and bluer skies, but Irving kept himself shut in his rooms, working on his book. He had Livingston for company, but while Irving liked the young man, he hadn't warmed to him in the same way he had to Hamilton or Carson Brevoort. “We live pleasantly together because we do not interfere with one another,” he said somewhat brusquely. Not that he needed or even wanted the companionship. He had his muse, he explained to Sarah Storrow, and his memories, to fill the quiet moments: “My life has been a chequered one, crowded with incidents and personages, and full of shifting scenes and sudden transitions; all these I can summon up and cause to pass before me, and in this way can pass hours together in a kind of reverie. When I was young my imagination was always in the advance, picturing out the future and building castles in the air, now memory comes in the place of imagination, and I look back over the region I have traveled.”76