Complete Fictional Works of Washington Irving (Illustrated) (491 page)

Irving had not contemplated publishing in England, but the papers began to be reprinted, and he was obliged to protect himself. He offered the sketches to Murray, the princely publisher, who afterwards dealt so liberally with him, but the venture was declined in a civil note, written in that charming phraseology with which authors are familiar, but which they would in vain seek to imitate. Irving afterwards greatly prized this letter. He undertook the risks of the publication himself, and the book sold well, although “written by an author the public knew nothing of, and published by a bookseller who was going to ruin.” In a few months Murray, who was thereafter proud to be Irving’s publisher, undertook the publication of the two volumes of the “Sketch-Book,” and also of the “Knickerbocker” history, which Mr. Lockhart had just been warmly praising in “Blackwood’s.” Indeed, he bought the copyright of the “Sketch-Book” for two hundred pounds. The time for the publisher’s complaisance had arrived sooner even than Scott predicted in one of his kindly letters to Irving, “when

“‘Your name is up and may go

From Toledo to Madrid.’”

Irving passed five years in England. Once recognized by the literary world, whatever was best in the society of letters and of fashion was open to him. He was a welcome guest in the best London houses, where he met the foremost literary personages of the time, and established most cordial relations with many of them; not to speak of statesmen, soldiers, and men and women of fashion, there were the elder D’Israeli, Southey, Campbell, Hallam, Gifford, Milman, Foscolo, Rogers, Scott, and Belzoni fresh from his Egyptian explorations. In Irving’s letters this old society passes in review: Murray’s drawing-rooms; the amusing blue-stocking coteries of fashion of which Lady Caroline Lamb was a promoter; the Countess of Besborough’s, at whose house the Duke could be seen; the Wimbledon country seat of Lord and Lady Spence; Belzoni, a giant of six feet five, the center of a group of eager auditors of the Egyptian marvels; Hallam, affable and unpretending, and a copious talker; Gifford, a small, shriveled, deformed man of sixty, with something of a humped back, eyes that diverge, and a large mouth, reclining on a sofa, propped up by cushions, with none of the petulance that you would expect from his Review, but a mild, simple, unassuming man, — he it is who prunes the contributions and takes the sting out of them (one would like to have seen them before the sting was taken out); and Scott, the right honest-hearted, entering into the passing scene with the hearty enjoyment of a child, to whom literature seems a sport rather than a labor or ambition, an author void of all the petulance, egotism, and peculiarities of the craft. We have Moore’s authority for saying that the literary dinner described in the “Tales of a Traveller,” whimsical as it seems and pervaded by the conventional notion of the relations of publishers and authors, had a personal foundation. Irving’s satire of both has always the old-time Grub Street flavor, or at least the reminiscent tone, which is, by the way, quite characteristic of nearly everything that he wrote about England. He was always a little in the past tense. Buckthorne’s advice to his friend is, never to be eloquent to an author except in praise of his own works, or, what is nearly as acceptable, in disparagement of the work of his contemporaries. “If ever he speaks favorably of the productions of a particular friend, dissent boldly from him; pronounce his friend to be a blockhead; never fear his being vexed. Much as people speak of the irritability of authors, I never found one to take offense at such contradictions. No, no, sir, authors are particularly candid in admitting the faults of their friends.” At the dinner Buckthorne explains the geographical boundaries in the land of literature: you may judge tolerably well of an author’s popularity by the wine his bookseller gives him. “An author crosses the port line about the third edition, and gets into claret; and when he has reached the sixth or seventh, he may revel in champagne and burgundy.” The two ends of the table were occupied by the two partners, one of whom laughed at the clever things said by the poet, while the other maintained his sedateness and kept on carving. “His gravity was explained to us by my friend Buckthorne. He informed me that the concerns of the house were admirably distributed among the partners. Thus, for instance, said he, the grave gentleman is the carving partner, who attends to the joints; and the other is the laughing partner, who attends to the jokes.” If any of the jokes from the lower end of the table reached the upper end, they seldom produced much effect. “Even the laughing partner did not think it necessary to honor them with a smile; which my neighbor Buckthorne accounted for by informing me that there was a certain degree of popularity to be obtained before a book seller could afford to laugh at an author’s jokes.”

In August, 1820, we find Irving in Paris, where his reputation secured him a hearty welcome: he was often at the Cannings’ and at Lord Holland’s; Talma, then the king of the stage, became his friend, and there he made the acquaintance of Thomas Moore, which ripened into a familiar and lasting friendship. The two men were drawn to each other; Irving greatly admired the “noble hearted, manly, spirited little fellow, with a mind as generous as his fancy is brilliant.” Talma was playing “Hamlet” to overflowing houses, which hung on his actions with breathless attention, or broke into ungovernable applause; ladies were carried fainting from the boxes. The actor is described as short in stature, rather inclined to fat, with a large face and a thick neck; his eyes are bluish, and have a peculiar cast in them at times. He said to Irving that he thought the French character much changed — graver; the day of the classic drama, mere declamation and fine language, had gone by; the Revolution had taught them to demand real life, incident, passion, character. Irving’s life in Paris was gay enough, and seriously interfered with his literary projects. He had the fortunes of his brother Peter on his mind also, and invested his earnings, then and for some years after, in enterprises for his benefit that ended in disappointment.

The “Sketch-Book” was making a great fame for him in England. Jeffrey, in the “Edinburgh Review,” paid it a most flattering tribute, and even the savage “Quarterly” praised it. A rumor attributed it to Scott, who was always masquerading; at least, it was said, he might have revised it, and should have the credit of its exquisite style. This led to a sprightly correspondence between Lady Littleton, the daughter of Earl Spencer, one of the most accomplished and lovely women of England, and Benjamin Rush, Minister to the Court of St. James, in the course of which Mr. Rush suggested the propriety of giving out under his official seal that Irving was the author of “Waverley.” “Geoffrey Crayon is the most fashionable fellow of the day,” wrote the painter Leslie. Lord Byron, in a letter to Murray, underscored his admiration of the author, and subsequently said to an American, “His Crayon, — I know it by heart; at least, there is not a passage that I cannot refer to immediately.” And afterwards he wrote to Moore, “His writings are my delight.” There seemed to be, as some one wrote, “a kind of conspiracy to hoist him over the heads of his contemporaries.” Perhaps the most satisfactory evidence of his popularity was his publisher’s enthusiasm. The publisher is an infallible contemporary barometer.

It is worthy of note that an American should have captivated public attention at the moment when Scott and Byron were the idols of the English-reading world.

In the following year Irving was again in England, visiting his sister in Birmingham, and tasting moderately the delights of London. He was, indeed, something of an invalid. An eruptive malady, — the revenge of nature, perhaps, for defeat in her earlier attack on his lungs,-appearing in his ankles, incapacitated him for walking, tormented him at intervals so that literary composition was impossible, sent him on pilgrimages to curative springs, and on journeys undertaken for distraction and amusement, in which all work except that of seeing and absorbing material had to be postponed. He was subject to this recurring invalidism all his life, and we must regard a good part of the work he did as a pure triumph of determination over physical discouragement. This year the fruits of his interrupted labor appeared in “Bracebridge Hall,” a volume that was well received, but did not add much to his reputation, though it contained “Dolph Heyliger,” one of his most characteristic Dutch stories, and the “Stout Gentleman,” one of his daintiest and most artistic bits of restrained humor. — [‘I was once’ says his biographer reading aloud in his presence a very flattering review of his works, which, had been sent him by the critic in 1848, and smiled as I came to this sentence: ‘His most comical pieces have always a serious end in view.’—’You laugh,’ said he, but it is true. I have kept that to myself hitherto, but that man has found me out. He has detected the moral of the Stout Gentleman with that air of whimsical significance so natural to him.’]

Irving sought relief from his malady by an extended tour in Germany. He sojourned some time in Dresden, whither his reputation had preceded him, and where he was cordially and familiarly received, not only by the foreign residents, but at the prim and antiquated little court of King Frederick Augustus and Queen Amalia. Of Irving at this time Mrs. Emily Fuller (nee Foster), whose relations with him have been referred to, wrote in 1860:

“He was thoroughly a gentleman, not merely in external manners and look, but to the innermost fibres and core of his heart; sweet-tempered, gentle, fastidious, sensitive, and gifted with the warmest affections; the most delightful and invariably interesting companion; gay and full of humor, even in spite of occasional fits of melancholy, which he was, however, seldom subject to when with those he liked; a gift of conversation that flowed like a full river in sunshine, — bright, easy, and abundant.”

Those were pleasant days at Dresden, filled up with the society of bright and warm-hearted people, varied by royal boar hunts, stiff ceremonies at the little court, tableaux, and private theatricals, yet tinged with a certain melancholy, partly constitutional, that appears in most of his letters. His mind was too unsettled for much composition. He had little self-confidence, and was easily put out by a breath of adverse criticism. At intervals he would come to the Fosters to read a manuscript of his own.

“On these occasions strict orders were given that no visitor should be admitted till the last word had been read, and the whole praised or criticised, as the case may be. Of criticism, however, we were very spare, as a slight word would put him out of conceit of a whole work. One of the best things he has published was thrown aside, unfinished, for years, because the friend to whom he read it, happening, unfortunately, not to be well, and sleepy, did not seem to take the interest in it he expected. Too easily discouraged, it was not till the latter part of his career that he ever appreciated himself as an author. One condemning whisper sounded louder in his ear than the plaudits of thousands.”

This from Miss Emily Foster, who elsewhere notes his kindliness in observing life:

“Some persons, in looking upon life, view it as they would view a picture, with a stern and criticising eye. He also looks upon life as a picture, but to catch its beauties, its lights, — not its defects and shadows. On the former he loves to dwell. He has a wonderful knack at shutting his eyes to the sinister side of anything. Never beat a more kindly heart than his; alive to the sorrows, but not to the faults, of his friends, but doubly alive to their virtues and goodness. Indeed, people seemed to grow more good with one so unselfish and so gentle.”

In London, some years later:

“He was still the same; time changed him very little. His conversation was as interesting as ever [he was always an excellent relater]; his dark gray eyes still full of varying feeling; his smile ‘half playful, half melancholy, but ever kind. All that was mean, or envious, or harsh, he seemed to turn from so completely that, when with him, it seemed that such things were not. All gentle and tender affections, Nature in her sweetest or grandest moods, pervaded his whole imagination, and left no place for low or evil thoughts; and when in good spirits, his humor, his droll descriptions, and his fun would make the gravest or the saddest laugh.”

As to Irving’s “state of mind” in Dresden, it is pertinent to quote a passage from what we gather to be a journal kept by Miss Flora Foster:

“He has written. He has confessed to my mother, as to a true and dear friend, his love for E —— , and his conviction of its utter hopelessness. He feels himself unable to combat it. He thinks he must try, by absence, to bring more peace to his mind. Yet he cannot bear to give up our friendship, — an intercourse become so dear to him, and so necessary to his daily happiness. Poor Irving!”

It is well for our peace of mind that we do not know what is going down concerning us in “journals.” On his way to the Herrnhuthers, Mr. Irving wrote to Mrs. Foster:

“When I consider how I have trifled with my time, suffered painful vicissitudes of feeling, which for a time damaged both mind and body, — when I consider all this, I reproach myself that I did not listen to the first impulse of my mind, and abandon Dresden long since. And yet I think of returning! Why should I come back to Dresden? The very inclination that dooms me thither should furnish reasons for my staying away.”

In this mood, the Herrnhuthers, in their right-angled, whitewashed world, were little attractive.

“If the Herrnhuthers were right in their notions, the world would have been laid out in squares and angles and right lines, and everything would have been white and black and snuff-color, as they have been clipped by these merciless retrenchers of beauty and enjoyment. And then their dormitories! Think of between one and two hundred of these simple gentlemen cooped up at night in one great chamber! What a concert of barrel-organs in this great resounding saloon! And then their plan of marriage! The very birds of the air choose their mates from preference and inclination; but this detestable system of lot! The sentiment of love may be, and is, in a great measure, a fostered growth of poetry and romance, and balder-dashed with false sentiment; but with all its vitiations, it is the beauty and the charm, the flavor and the fragrance, of all intercourse between man and woman; it is the rosy cloud in the morning of life; and if it does too often resolve itself into the shower, yet, to my mind, it only makes our nature more fruitful in what is excellent and amiable.”