Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor Part 3

After the failure of his business, when Irving saw that he must write something at once to meet his ordinary living expenses, he went up to London and prepared several sketches, which he sent to his friend, Henry Brevoort, in New York. Among them was the story of Rip Van Winkle. This, with the other sketches, was printed in handsome form as the first number of a periodical, which was offered for sale at seventy-five cents. Though "The Sketch Book," as the periodical was called, professed to be edited by "Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.," every one knew that Was.h.i.+ngton Irving was the real author. In fact, the best story in the first number, "Rip Van Winkle," was represented to be a posthumous writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker, the author of the "History of New York."

There are few Americans who do not know the story of "Rip Van Winkle"

by heart; for those who have not read the story, have at least seen the play in which Joseph Jefferson, the great actor, has made himself so famous.

Attached to the story is a note supposed to have been written by Diedrich Knickerbocker, which a careless reader might overlook, but which is an excellent introduction to the story. Says he:

"The story of Rip Van Winkle may seem incredible to many, but nevertheless I give it my full belief, for I know the vicinity of our old Dutch settlements to have been very subject to marvelous events and appearances. Indeed, I have heard many stranger stories than this in the villages along the Hudson; all of which were too well authenticated to admit of a doubt. I have even talked with Rip Van Winkle myself, who, when I last saw him, was a very venerable old man, and so perfectly rational and consistent on every point, that I think no conscientious person could refuse to take this into the bargain; nay, I have seen a certificate on the subject, taken before a country justice, and signed with a cross, in the justice's own handwriting.

The story, therefore, is beyond the possibility of doubt."

Rip was truly an original character. He had a shrewish wife who was always scolding him; and he seems to have deserved all the cross things she said to him, for he had "an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor--in other words, he was as lazy a fellow as you could find in all the country side."

Nevertheless, every one liked him, he was so good-natured. "He was a great favorite among all the good wives of the village, who took his part in all the family squabbles; and never failed whenever they talked those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever he approached. He a.s.sisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians. Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a troop of them, hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and playing a thousand tricks on him with impunity; and not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighborhood."

You can't find much fault with a man who is so well liked that even the dogs will not bark at him. You are reminded of Irving himself, who for so many years was so idle; and yet who, out of his very idleness, produced such charming stories.

"Rip Van Winkle," continues the narrative, "was one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family."

This description is as perfect and as delightful as any in the English language. Any one who cannot enjoy this has no perception of human nature, and no love of humor in his composition. In time Rip discovered that his only escape from his termagant wife was to take his gun, and stroll off into the woods with his dog. "Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share the contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathized as a fellow sufferer in persecution. 'Poor Wolf,' he would say, 'thy mistress leads thee a dog's life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee!' Wolf would wag his tail, look wistfully into his master's face, and if dogs can feel pity, I verily believe he reciprocated with all his heart."

Rip is just the sort of fellow to have some sort of adventure, and we are not at all astonished when we find him helping the dwarf carry his keg of liquor up the mountain. The description of "the odd-looking personages playing at nine-pins" whom he finds on entering the amphitheater, is a perfect picture in words; for the truly great writer is a painter of pictures quite as much as the great artist.

"They were dressed in a quaint outlandish fas.h.i.+on; some wore short doublets, others jerkins, with long knives in their belts. Their visages, too, were peculiar: one had a large head, broad face, and small piggish eyes; the face of another seemed to consist entirely of nose, and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat, set off with a little red c.o.c.k's tail. They all had beards of various shapes and colors. There was one who seemed to be the commander. He was a stout old gentleman, with a weather-beaten countenance; he wore a laced doublet, broad belt and hanger, high-crowned hat and feather, red stockings, and high-heeled shoes, with roses in them.... What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though these folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness of the scene but the noise of the b.a.l.l.s, which, whenever they were rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder."

But now comes a surprise. Rip indulges too freely in the contents of the keg and falls asleep. When he wakes he finds a rusty old gun beside him, and he whistles in vain for his dog. He goes back to the village; but every thing and everybody is strange and changed. Putting his hand to his chin he finds that his beard has grown a foot. He has been sleeping twenty years.

But you must read the story for yourselves. It will bear reading many times, and each time you will find in it something to smile at and enjoy.

CHAPTER XI

LITERARY SUCCESS IN ENGLAND

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" also purports to be written by Diedrich Knickerbocker, and it is only less famous than "Rip Van Winkle." When he was a boy, Irving had gone hunting in Sleepy Hollow, which is not far from New York city; and in the latter part of his life he bought a low stone house there of Mr. Van Ta.s.sel and fitted it up for his bachelor home.

"The outline of this story," says his nephew Pierre Irving, "had been sketched more than a year before[+] at Birmingham, after a conversation with his brother-in-law, Van Wart, who had been dwelling on some recollections of his early years at Tarrytown, and had touched upon a waggish fiction of one Brom Bones, a wild blade, who professed to fear nothing, and boasted of his having once met the devil on a return from a nocturnal frolic, and run a race with him for a bowl of milk punch. The imagination of the author suddenly kindled over the recital, and in a few hours he had scribbled off the framework of his renowned story, and was reading it to his sister and her husband. He then threw it by until he went up to London, where it was expanded into the present legend."

[Footnote +: That is, before it was finally written and published.]

No sooner had the first number of the "Sketch Book," as published in New York, come to England, than a periodical began reprinting it, and Irving heard that a publisher intended to bring it out in book form.

That made him decide to publish it in England himself, and he did so at his own expense. The publisher soon failed, and by Scott's help, as already explained, Irving got his book into the hands of Murray.

Murray finally gave him a thousand dollars for the copyright. But when it was published, it proved so very popular that Murray paid him five hundred more. From that time forward he received large sums for his writings, both in the United States and in England.

The "Sketch Book" was followed by "Bracebridge Hall," consisting of stories and sketches of the same character; and later by the "Tales of a Traveller."

In the "Tales of a Traveller" we are most interested in "Buckthorne and his Friends," a series of English stories, with descriptions of literary life in London. Most famous of all is the account of a publishers' dinner, with a description of the carving partner sitting gravely at one end, with never a smile on his face, while at the other end of the table sits the laughing partner; and the poor authors are arranged at the table and are treated by the partners according to the number of editions their books have sold.

Irving's father was a Scotchman, and his mother was an Englishwoman; and one of his sisters and one of his brothers, as we have already learned, lived in England for many years. It is not strange, then, that England became to him a second home, and that many of his best stories and descriptions in the "Sketch Book," "Bracebridge Hall," and the "Tales of a Traveller" relate to English characters and scenes.

CHAPTER XII

IRVING GOES TO SPAIN

When Irving went to Liverpool in 1815, it was his intention to travel on the continent of Europe. As we have seen, business reasons made that impossible. But after the publication and success of the "Sketch Book" he was free. He was now certain of an income, and his reputation was so great that he attracted notice wherever he went.

In 1820, after having spent five years in England, he at last set out on his European journey. We cannot follow him in all his wanderings; but one country that he visited furnished him the materials for the most serious, and in one way the most important part of his literary work. This was Spain. Here he spent a great deal of time, returning again and again; and finally he was appointed United States minister to that country.

He first went to Spain to collect materials for the "Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus." This was a much more serious work than anything he had before undertaken. It was, unlike the history of New York, a genuine investigation of facts derived from the musty old volumes of the libraries of Spanish monasteries and other ancient collections. It was a record of the life of the discoverer of America that was destined to remain the highest authority on that subject.

Murray, the London publisher, paid him over fifteen thousand dollars for the English copyright alone.

In his study among the ruins of Spain, Irving found many other things which greatly interested him--legends, and tales of the Moors who had once ruled there, and of the ruined beauties of the Moorish palace of the Alhambra. His imagination was set on fire, he was delighted with the images of by-gone days of glittering pageantry which his fancy called up. Before his history of Columbus was finished, he began the writing of a book so precisely to his taste that he could not restrain himself until it was finished. This was the "Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada"--a true history, but one which reads more like a romance of the Middle Ages than a simple record of facts.

This was followed by four other books based on Spanish history and legend. It seemed as if Irving could never quite abandon this entrancing subject, for during the entire remainder of his life he went back to it constantly.

When his great history of the life of Columbus was published and proved its merit, Irving was honored in a way he had little expected in his more idle days. The Royal Society of Literature bestowed upon him one of two fifty-guinea[+] gold medals awarded annually, and the University of Oxford conferred the degree of L.L.D.

[Footnote +: Two hundred and fifty dollars.]

The "Life of Columbus" was followed in 1831 by the "Voyages of the Companions of Columbus." In the following year Irving returned to the United States after an absence of seventeen years.

He was no longer an idle young man unable to fix his mind on any serious work; he had become the most famous of American men of letters. When he reached New York his countrymen hastened to heap honors upon him, and almost overwhelmed him with public attentions.

CHAPTER XIII

"THE ALHAMBRA"

Just before Irving's return to the United States in 1832, he prepared for publication some sketches which he had made three or four years before while living for a few months in the ruins of the Alhambra, the ancient palace of the Moorish kings when they ruled the kingdom of Granada. Next to the stories of "Rip Van Winkle" and the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," nothing that Irving has written has proved more popular than this volume of "The Alhambra;" and it has made the ancient ruin a place of pilgrimage for tourists in Europe ever since.

In this volume Irving not only describes in his own peculiarly charming manner his experiences in the halls of the Alhambra itself, but he gives many of the stories and legends of the place, most of which were told to him by Mateo Ximenes, a "son of the Alhambra," who acted as his guide. This is the way he came to secure Mateo's services:

"At the gate were two or three ragged, super-annuated soldiers, dozing on a stone bench, the successors of the Zegris and the Abencerrages; while a tall, meagre valet, whose rusty-brown cloak was evidently intended to conceal the ragged state of his nether garments, was lounging in the suns.h.i.+ne and gossipping with the ancient sentinel on duty. He joined us as we entered the gate, and offered his services to show us the fortress.

"I have a traveler's dislike to officious ciceroni, and did not altogether like the garb of the applicant.

"'You are well acquainted with the place, I presume?'

"'n.o.body better; in fact, sir, I am a son of the Alhambra.'

"'The common Spaniards have certainly a most poetical way of expressing themselves. 'A son of the Alhambra!' the appellation caught me at once; the very tattered garb of my new acquaintance a.s.sumed a dignity in my eyes. It was emblematic of the fortunes of the place, and befitted the progeny of a ruin."