Washington Irving's Sketch book

Front matter

Class _T^^LOA^ Book . A i

Copyright N".

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT.

Preface

The editor wishes to express his gratitude to the author of the Introduction, and to the editor of the series, under whose general direction the notes have been prepared.

A. C.

New York City, November, 1905.

Contents

Introduction, .....

Suggestions for Teachers, Chronological Table, Preface to the Revised Edition, The Author's Account of Himself The Voyage, ....

Rip Van Winkle, ....

Introduction

I. THE AUTHOR

Washington Irving was bom in New York on April 3, 1783, while the city was still in the possession of the British troops. Although his father was a Scotchman by birth and had been in America only a few years before the Revolution began, the family was staunchly patriotic. The boy was not christened till after the British had evacuated the city, and after the American forces had marched i;i; '^Washington's work is ended," the mother said, "and the child shall be named for him." A few years later, when Washington came to New York to be inaugurated as the first President of the United States, a Scotch maidservant of the Irvings took the child up to him in a shop one day, saying, ''Please, your honor, here's a bairn was named for you," and the great man gave the boy his blessing.

In New York Washington Irving grew to manhood, going to school, playing along the wharves amid the shipping of all nations, and making voyages in a sloop up the Hudson River. To his lasting regret in later life he did not avail himself of the chance of entering Columbia College, where his two elder brothers had been graduated. He studied law for a while, but without putting his heart into the task. When he was only nineteen he wrote a series of light and clever essays for the newspaper one of his brothers had just then started; these papers were signed "Jonathan Oldstyle;" they were praised and widely copied in the newspapers of other cities. His health was feeble, and when he was twenty-one his

X INTRODUCTION

brothers sent him to Europe, trusting that the long voyage and the change of scene would do him good. So ill did he seem as he was helped up the side of the ship that the Captain said to himself, '^ There's a chap who will go overboard before we get across."

But his brothers were right, and the sea-captain was wrong. Irving gained strength during the voyage and during his rambles through France, Italy, and England. He returned home, after an absence of a year and a half, and resumed his law studies. He was even admitted to the bar, although he knew little law and had no great liking for it. Early in 1807, before he was twenty-four years old, he joined one of his brothers and his friend, Paulding, in sending forth the first number of Salmagundi, an intermittent publication, containing essays and social sketches and much pleasant satire of the ways of the hour. Twenty numbers were issued during the year; and then Irving's attention was called to other things.

He fell in love and was engaged to be married; but before the wedding day the chosen bride caught cold and, after a brief illness, died. Irving bore the sudden blow bravely, but he never recovered from it. He was then occupied in writing a burlesque history of New York; and after the first bitterness of his grief had passed away, he went back to his labor on this book of humor. That a work abounding in playful fun shouM have been written in these hours of sadness may seem strange to some; but it is among the paradoxes of literature that the writings which have called forth the most laughter are those of men themselves serious. Moliere had a melancholy of his own; Cervantes was grave rather than gay; and Swift was morose beyond the verge of misanthropy. There is more than a suggestion of the humor of Cervantes and of the humor of Swift in the book that Irving wrote in those days of despondency. This book was called ''A History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker;" it was published at the end of 1809; and it met with an instant appreciation, which has continued down to the present time.

INTRODUCTION xi

In spite of the encouragement of this success Irving did not promptly undertake another book. For eight or ten years he seems to have found it hard to settle himself down to anything. He went to Washington for a while; and then he edited a magazine in Philadelphia. During the war of 1812 he served on the governor's staff. In 1815, after peace was declared, he went over to England to see his brother. He had meant to be gone only a few months, but he remained abroad seventeen years.

In 1819, being then about thirty-six years old, Irving began to publish in parts a miscellany of essays and stories and travel-sketches. He called it ''The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon." The first number contained the immortal tale of '' Rip Van Winkle," and the rest of the seven numbers had papers inferior in interest only to this. The complete book was published toward the end of 1820 both in New York and London; and its success was as widespread in Great Britain as in the United States. Washington Irving was the first author of American birth to win acceptance in the mother-country. Perhaps this popularity in England is due partly to the fact that, although he was a most loyal American, he had a strong liking for the old home of the race and a willingness to describe it in his pleasant pages. No single work has been more potent than the ''Sketch-Book" in directing to Stratford on Avon and through Westminster Abbey the unending procession of transatlantic travellers from America.

Having at last discovered what he could do, Irving was no longer indolent, and he followed up the success of the "Sketch-Book" with two other books not unlike it in style and in subject. The first of these was "Bracebridge Hall," which appeared two years later, in 1822; the second was the " Tales of a Traveller," which was published in 1824, after he had been for several months wandering about the continent of Europe in search of health. After these books were printed Irving was again in doubt what to undertake next; but soon the project seized him xii INTRODUCTION

of going to Spain to make a translation of certain important documents concerning Columbus.

Irving's stay in Spain was prolonged from February, 1826, to September, 1829, and it was the most fruitful period of his literary career. He soon gave up translating to begin an original work, ''The Life and Voyages of Columbus." This was published in 1828; and it was followed the year after by the ''Conquest of Granada." When Irving finally left Spain he brought with him the materials for his account of the "Companions of Columbus," published in 1831, and for the volume on the "Alhambra." This last book, which appeared in 1832, has been called a "Spanish Sketch-Book," and its success, like that of the original "Sketch-Book," was immediate and has been enduring.

Toward the close of his stay in Spain Irving was appointed secretary of legation in London. This post he filled for some two years, when he resigned. In the spring of 1832 he went back to America, arriving in New York in May, and receiving at once many tokens of the high esteem in which he was held by his fellow-countrymen. He was the acknowledged leader of American literature. Publicly and privately he was made welcome. He settled down at Sunnyside, the home he chose for himself at Tarrytown on the banks of the Hudson, near the Sleepy Hollow he had celebrated. There he lived quietly for ten years, writing a little now and then, editing a book or two and collecting material for a biography of Washington.

Then, most unexpectedly, the Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, proffered him the appointment of Minister to Spain. He did not like the idea of leaving his pleasant home, but he was induced to accept. He knew that his appointment was a compliment to the whole profession of letters. Like the other American authors who have been sent abroad as ministers to foreign countries he acquitted himself well at his post; so did Franklin in France, Bancroft in England and in Germany, Motley in Austria

INTRODUCTION xiii

and in England, Lowell in Spain and in England, and Bayard Taylor in Germany. In the fall of 1846 Irving returned to America, being then sixty-three years old.

In this same year he amplified a brief biography of Oliver Goldsmith, a charming writer whose spirit was closely akin to his own; and he also published an account of ''Mahomet and his Successors." In 1855 he gathered together various essays and sketches into another volume of the ''Sketch-Book" type, which he published under the title of "Wolfert's Roost." In 1855 also began to appear his "Life of George Washington," the longest and most serious of all his works. With characteristic modesty Irving had grave doubts about this biography, but his fellow-historians encouraged him with warm praise, and the public showed a hearty appreciation of it.

The last years of his life seem to have been happy, like the last years of most other American authors. He was comfortably settled in the home he had chosen, near the city of his birth, where he had many friends. He was a familiar figure in the streets of New York; and the late George William Curtis has left us an admirable description of his appearance:

"Forty years ago, upon a pleasant afternoon, you might have seen tripping with an elastic step along Broadway, in New York, a figure which even then would have been called quaint. It was a man of about sixty-six or sixty-seven years old, of a rather solid frame, wearing a Talma, as a short cloak of the time was called, that hung from the shoulders, and low shoes, neatly tied, which were observable at a time when boots were generally worn. The head was slightly declined to one side, the face was smoothly shaven, and the eyes twinkled with kindly humor and shrewdness. There was a chirping, cheery, old-school air in the whole appearance, an undeniable Dutch aspect, which, in the streets of New Amsterdam, irresistibly recalled Diedrich Knickerbocker. The observer might easily have supposed that he saw some later descendant of the ren-owned Wouter Van Twiller refined into a nineteenth-century gentleman.

xiv INTRODUCTION

The occasional start of interest as the figure was recognized by some one in the passing throng, the respectful bow, and the sudden turn to scan him more closely, indicated that he was not unknown. Indeed, he was the Apierican of his time universally known. This modest and kindly man was the creator of Diedrich Knickerbocker and Rip Van Winkle. He was the father of our literature, and at that time its patriarch. He was Washington Irving."

He lived to publish the last volume of his ''Washington" and to revise a new and complete edition of his works. Then, on November 28, 1859, he died, in the seventy-seventh year of his age. He was buried near the Sunnyside he loved and near the Sleepy Hollow he had made famous. His life had spanned a complete period of American history, for he had been born just before the close of the Revolution, and he died just before the outbreak of the Civil War.

II. THE BOOK

It is as interesting as it is instructive to try to trace the pedigrees of books, and to see whence a masterpiece derived its form and what later works it influenced in its turn. The "Sketch-Book" owed much to the chief of the English essayists, to Steele and Addison, to the Tatler and the Spectator; and perhaps its debt was as great to the ''Citizen of the World" of Goldsmith, a man of letters with whom Irving had much in common. But it had also an originality of its own in so far as it was frankly a miscellany, the separate papers in which pretended to no other bond than that provided by the fact that they were all written by the same author. A "Geoffrey Crayon" was thus at liberty to enrich this sketch-book of his with a story or with an essay; he was free to describe a scene at will or to depict a character. The volume might be long or it might be short; it might be grave or it might be gay; it might be sad or it might be satiric; it might be what-

INTRODUCTION xv

ever the author chose to make it, and the reader could not reasonably complain.

The Spectator of Steele and Addison, as we have it now, not in the original numbers, issued twice a week, but bound in a series of volumes, bears an obvious likeness to our modern magazines. We find in it essays on men and on manners, obituary articles, book-reviews, and comments on current plays. We discover not only brief tales which are the forerunners of our latter-day short stories and character sketches; but we remark also the series of papers, published at irregular intervals, outlining the career and the character of Sir Roger de Coverley; and we can accept this as an early attempt at our more modern serial story continued from month to month. This variety is one of the characteristics of the Spectator borrowed by Irving in the ''Sketch-Book," which thus stands midway between the periodical papers of' the eighteenth-century essayists and the more elaborate monthly magazines of the twentieth century.

A framework as flexible as this was exactly suited to a writer like Irving, and it is not to be wondered at that he modified the form but little in the two works he wrote next after the " Sketch-Book." Like the contents of that, the contents of ''Bracebridge Hall" and the contents of the ''Tales of a Traveller" were papers picked out of his portfolio and arbitrarily sent forth as a book. So undecided was he as to what he should put into one work or the other, that the account of " Buckthorne" in the " Tales of a Traveller" was originally a part of "Bracebridge Hall." In both of the later books we find little that is not contained in germ, at least, in the first of the three. In "Bracebridge Hall" we can see a continuation of the sketches of English life and English manners and English scenery, of which the papers in the "Sketch-Book" on "Christmas" and the "Stage Coach" had given a foretaste. In the "Tales of a Traveller" we find stories touched with mystery and tinged with humor, not unlike the "Spectre Bridegroom" and the "Legend of Sleepy xvi INTRODUCTION

Hollow" in the original collection. All three books purport to be written by ''Geoffrey Crayon"; and every one of them is what ''Bracebridge Hall" was styled on its title-page, ''a medley."

The ''Sketch-Book" itself was originally issued, not in a single volume, but in seven parts, of which the first appeared in May, 1819, and the seventh in September, 1820. The entire collection was sent forth as a book not long after the publication of the last of the separate parts. Many of the several stories and essays had been reprinted in British periodicals; and Irving was encouraged to have the book published in London also, where it was issued in two volumes. Its success seems to have been instantaneous on both sides of the Atlantic ; and it is not too much to say that Irving was the earliest American author to achieve popularity in Great Britain, — a popularity almost equal to that he attained in the United States. Perhaps his welcome in England was due to the American flavor of "Rip Van Winkle" and the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," perhaps it was rather the result of the cordiality with which he depicted English shrines and English customs. To a casual reader even it was obvious that Irving remained a good American, although he had made himself at home in Great Britain. He Uked the British; but he did not flatter them, as the character of "John Bull" proves plainly enough, even if the frank warning to "English Writers on America" had not been printed in the second part to show exactly where he stood.

Some of the papers which Irving drew out of his portfolio may have been written in America, but the most of them were evidently the result of his sojourn in England in the years immediately preceding the publication. His aim in sending forth the book is plainly stated in a letter to one of his friends in New York:

"I have attempted no lofty theme, nor sought to look wise and learned, which appears to be very much the fashion among our American writers, at present. I have

INTRODUCTION xvii

preferred addressing myself to the feeling and fancy of the reader, more than to his judgment. My writings, therefore, may appear light and trifling in our country of philosophers and politicians; but if they possess merit in the class of literature to which they belong, it is all to which I aspire in the work. I seek only to blow a flute accompaniment in the national concert, and leave others to play the fiddle and French horn." ^

To the first number there was prefixed a prospectus, which the author did not reprint when he collected his sketches into a book, — probably because the success of the work was then already assured. But the modesty with which Irving presented himself is so characteristic that the passage deserves quotation here: —

''The following writings are published on experiment; should they please they may be followed by others. The writer will have to contend with some disadvantages. He is unsettled in his abode, subject to interruptions, and has his share of cares and vicissitudes. He cannot, therefore, promise a regular plan, nor regular periods of publication. Should he be encouraged to proceed, much time may elapse between the appearance of his numbers; and their size will depend on the materials he may have on hand. His writings will partake of the fluctuations of his own thoughts and feelings — sometimes treating of scenes before him, sometimes of others purely imaginary, and sometimes wandering back with his recollections to his native country. He will not be able to give them that tranquil attention necessary to finished composition; and as they must be transmitted across the Atlantic for publication, he will have to trust to others to correct the frequent errors of the press. Should his writings, however, with all their imperfections, be well received, he cannot conceal that it would be a source of the purest gratification; for though he does not aspire to those high honors which are the rewards of loftier intellects, yet it is the dearest wish of his heart to have a secure and

1 Life and Letters of Washington Irving, Edition of 1869, vol. i., page 415.

xviii INTRODUCTION

cherished, though humble corner in the good opinions and kind feehngs of his countrymen." ^

Irving, as has been pointed out, followed up the "Sketch-Book" with ''Bracebridge Hall" and the ''Tales of a Traveller," which were fairly to be termed continuations, since the framework was the same, and the pictures within were very like. After the publication of the third of these, and after certain minor men of letters in Great Britain as well as in the United States had begun to imitate his method, he wrote to a friend in New York that ''other writers have crowded into the same branch of literature, and now I begin to find myself elbowed by men who have followed my footsteps; but at any rate I have the merit of adopting a line for myself instead of following others."

Irving was justified in thinking that his writing had an originality of its own. At any rate Sir Walter Scott was of the same opinion. Scott had early appreciated Irving's writing; he had read "Knickerbocker's History" aloud to his family, likening its humor to Swift's and to Sterne's; and he had given a cordial welcome to the " Sketch-Book." When Scott wrote his essay, "On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition," he praised the ludicrous sketch of the "Bold Dragoon" as being the only instance of the fantastic then to be found in the English language, and he evidently held it to be worthy of comparison with the best examples in German.

Perhaps what was most original and most important in this book was the group of stories and character sketches in which Irving handled American legends, and in which he proved that a proper background for romance could be found even here in the United States, often supposed to be too prosperous and too prosaic for any effort of eerie fancy. Later authors have followed Irving in treating the fantastic and the ghostly, and some of the tales they have told have a higher color and a solider

1 Life and Letters, vol. i., page 417.

INTRODUCTION xix

structure than Irving's; but no one of them has excelled him in the use of humor. Irving's stories are full of quiet fun, never boisterous, and never violent. At times there is a lurking hint of irony; and the omnipresent humor is always delicate and never insistent. "Rip Van Winkle" and the ''Legend of Sleepy Hollow" in the ''Sketch- Book," "Guests from Gibbet's Island" in "Wolfert's Roost," and two stories in the "Tales of a Traveller," the "Devil and Tom Walker" and "Wolfert Webber," are worthy of comparison with the one story of this sort that Scott wrote, "Wandering Willie's Tale," introduced into "Redgauntlet," which was published in the same year as the "Tales of a Traveller," and therefore after the stories in the " Sketch-Book. "

Like Scott in Great Britain, Poe and Hawthorne in the United States felt the influence of Irving and followed in his footsteps. It was the pensive and romantic side of Irving's work which appealed to Longfellow, who read the "Sketch-Book" as a boy and who modelled his own early prose style on Irving's, as any one can see who will study "Outre-Mer." It was the playful and realistic side of Irving's work which attracted Dickens, who followed the American writer in describing and extolling the good old English customs at Christmas, as any one can see who will compare the Dingley Dell chapters of the "Pickwick Papers," with the corresponding pages of the "Sketch- Book" and "Bracebridge Hall." No British author, not even Dickens, has written more cordially about the charms and the pleasures of rural life in England than Irving, whom Thackeray called "the first ambassador whom the New World of Letters sent to the Old."

In words which one cannot strive to better, the late Charles Dudley Warner has declared the kind of man Irving was, and the kind of service he did to his country:

"His character is perfectly transparent; his predominant traits were humor and sentiment; his temperament was gay with a dash of melancholy; his inner life and his mental operations were the reverse of complex, and his

XX INTRODUCTION

literary method is simple. He felt his subject, and he expressed his conception not so much by direct statement or description as by almost imperceptible touches and shadings here and there, by a diffused tone and color, with very little show of analysis. Perhaps it is a sufficient definition to say that his method was the sympathetic. In the end the reader is put in possession of the luminous and complete idea upon which the author has been brooding, though he may not be able to say exactly how the impression has been conveyed to him; and I doubt if the author could have explained his sympathetic process. . . .

''Irving's position in American literature, or in that of the English tongue, will only be determined by the slow settling of opinion which no critic can foretell, and the operation of which no criticism seems able to explain. . . . The service that he rendered to American letters no critic disputes ; nor is there any question of our national indebtedness to him for investing a crude and new land with the enduring charms of romance and tradition. In this respect, our obligation to him is that of Scotland to Scott and Burns; and it is an obligation due only, in all history, to here and there a fortunate creator to whose genius opportunity is kind. The Knickerbocker Legend and the romance with which Irving has invested the Hudson are a priceless legacy."

Brander Matthews.

SUGCxESTIONS FOR TEACHERS

Full information concerning Irving's life can be found in ''The Life and Letters of Washington Irving," by his nephew, Pierre M. Irving (four volumes, New York, G. P. Putnam, 1862), and in Mr. Charles Dudley Warner's compact biography in the ''American Men of Letters Series," (Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1881).

Criticisms of Irving's work, in addition to the Introduction contained in this volume, will be found in Mr. Charles Dudley Warner's lecture, "The Work of Washington Irving" (Harper and Brothers, "Black and White Series," 1893); in one of the chapters of George William Curtis's "Literary and Social Essays" (Harper and Brothers, 1895) ; in an oration of Bryant's on Irving's life, character, and genius, delivered in 1860 before the New York Historical Society, and published in "Studies of Irving" (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1880); and in the essay called "Nil Nisi Bonum," written just after Irving's death and since reprinted in the volume of "Roundabout Papers," in which Thackeray paid his respects finally to the American author. Mr. Thomas A. Janvier's articles in the Century for 1890-91, since published in book form under the title of "In Old New York" (1894), will be found interesting in connection with Irving's colonial tales.

A list of Irving's works will be found in the Chronological Table, which is so arranged as to show not merely the sequence of his works and the main events of his life, but the principal works in English and American literature that appeared during his lifetime, and the dates of the births and deaths of some of the more important of his xxii SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS

contemporaries. A study of the table will give not a little information in regard to the development of English and American literature during the nineteenth century.

Instruction in English in the secondary schools is now so well organized, and good methods are so well understood, that it is unnecessary to describe here the customary treatment in the classroom of such a volume as the ''Sketch-Book." It may be well, however, to suggest that, particularly with young pupils, it may not prove advisable to read all the sketches, or to read them in the order in which the author arranged them. Some will prove more difficult, or less interesting, than others, and the grouping is not of especial importance.

The main value of the book for our purposes is that it serves as an admirable introduction both to composition and to literature. With so excellent a model before his eyes, the pupil can scarcely fail to improve his own style; and he will as certainly learn to appreciate that revelation of individuality in which lies the charm of genuine literature. Moreover, the ''Sketch-Book" will open the way for the "Tales of a Traveller," and that for Irving's other volumes of description and narrative, until the pupil will find himself with a well formed habit for good reading. A better author for boys and girls of fourteen to sixteen could scarcely be found. Like Macaulay, he is full of allusions, and herein lies not only part of his charm but much of his educative value, for these very allusions, unlike those of Macaulay, are rarely such as send one ta the dictionary and the encyclopaedia; they explain themselves, for the most part,— at least, in the long run— and build up for the young reader a mass of information that is really worth having. One has only to read Irving— to keep reading Irving — and he will rapidly become familiar with that somewhat desultory store of traditional fact and fancy that is so large an ingredient in the making of a cultivated man or woman.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

XXlll c.e.s

ill

1794. Bryant born. 1796. Burns died.

1803. Emerson born.

1807. Longfellow born.

1811. Thackeray born.

1812. Dickens, Browning born.

1819. Lowell, Ruskin

born. 1821. Keats died.

1822. Shelley died.

Matthew Arnold

born. 1824. Byron died.

E-

Ed

M

1793. Burns, Poems.

1798. Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads.

1805. Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel.

1808. Scott, Marmion.

1810. Scott, Lady of the Lake.

1812. Byron, Childe Harold (Cantos I. and II.).

1814. Scott, Waverley.

1816. Shelley. Alastor.

1817. Moore, Lalla Rookh.

1818. Keats, Endymion.

1822. Lamb, Essays of Elia.

1825. Macaulay, Essay

on Milton. 1830. Tennyson, Poems,

chiefly Lyrical.

a

IS o S 3

1817. Bryant, Thanatopsis.

1821. Cooper, The Spy.

00 00 s: o

o

1807-8. (With Paulding)

Salmagundi. 1809. Knickerbocker's

History of New York.

1822. Bracebridge Hall. 1824. Tales of a Traveller.

1828. Life and Voyages of Columbus.

1829. The Conquest of Grenada.

d

1804-6. First travels in Europe: Italy, France, England.

1806. Admitted to the bar.

1810. Became a member of his brother's business firm.

1811-15. Editor of the Analectic Magazine.

1814. Governor's aidede-camp.

1815-20. In England.

1820-26. In England, France, and Germany.

1829. Appointed SecretaPy of Legation at the Court of St. James.

XXIV

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE g a -

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W i

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H

00 00 00 00

Od o o