In a subsequent letter to Brevoort, dated at Seville, December 26, 1828, occurs almost the only piece of impatience and sarcasm that this long correspondence affords. "Columbus" had succeeded beyond his expectation, and its popularity was so great that some enterprising American had projected an abridgment, which it seems would not be protected by the copyright of the original. Irving writes:
"I have just sent to my brother an abridgment of 'Columbus' to be published immediately, as I find some paltry fellow is pirating an abridgment. Thus every line of life has its depredation. 'There be land rats and water rats, land pirates and water pirates,—I mean thieves,' as old Shylock says. I feel vexed at this shabby attempt to purloin this work from me, it having really cost me more toil and trouble than all my other productions, and being one that I trusted would keep me current with my countrymen; but we are making rapid advances in literature in America, and have already attained many of the literary vices and diseases of the old countries of Europe. We swarm with reviewers, though we have scarce original works sufficient for them to alight and prey upon, and we closely imitate all the worst tricks of the trade and of the craft in England. Our literature, before long, will be like some of those premature and aspiring whipsters, who become old men before they are young ones, and fancy they prove their manhood by their profligacy and their diseases."
But the work had an immediate, continued, and deserved success. It was critically contrasted with Robertson's account of Columbus, and it is open to the charge of too much rhetorical color here and there, and it is at times too diffuse; but its substantial accuracy is not questioned, and the glow of the narrative springs legitimately from the romance of the theme. Irving understood, what our later historians have fully appreciated, the advantage of vivid individual portraiture in historical narrative. His conception of the character and mission of Columbus is largely outlined, but firmly and most carefully executed, and is one of the noblest in literature. I cannot think it idealized, though it required a poetic sensibility to enter into sympathy with the magnificent dreamer, who was regarded by his own generation as the fool of an idea. A more prosaic treatment would have utterly failed to represent that mind, which existed from boyhood in an ideal world, and, amid frustrated hopes, shattered plans, and ignoble returns for his sacrifices, could always rebuild its glowing projects and conquer obloquy and death itself with immortal anticipations.
Towards the close of his residence in Spain, Irving received unexpectedly the appointment of Secretary of Legation to the Court of St. James, at which Louis McLane was American Minister; and after some hesitation, and upon the urgency of his friends, he accepted it. He was in the thick of literary projects. One of these was the History of the Conquest of Mexico, which he afterwards surrendered to Mr. Prescott, and another was the "Life of Washington," which was to wait many years for fulfillment. His natural diffidence and his reluctance to a routine life made him shrink from the diplomatic appointment; but once engaged in it, and launched again in London society, he was reconciled to the situation. Of honors there was no lack, nor of the adulation of social and literary circles. In April, 1830, the Royal Society of Literature awarded him one of the two annual gold medals placed at the disposal of the society by George IV., to be given to authors of literary works of eminent merit, the other being voted to the historian Hallam; and this distinction was followed by the degree of D. C. L. from the University of Oxford,—a title which the modest author never used.
In 1831 Mr. Irving was thrown, by his diplomatic position, into the thick of the political and social tumult, when the Reform Bill was pending and war was expected in Europe. It is interesting to note that for a time he laid aside his attitude of the dispassionate observer, and caught the general excitement. He writes in March, expecting that the fate of the cabinet will be determined in a week, looking daily for decisive news from Paris, and fearing dismal tidings from Poland. "However," he goes on to say in a vague way, "the great cause of all the world will go on. What a stirring moment it is to live in! I never took such intense interest in newspapers. It seems to me as if life were breaking out anew with me, or that I were entering upon quite a new and almost unknown career of existence, and I rejoice to find sensibilities, which were waning as to many objects of past interest, reviving with all their freshness and vivacity at the scenes and prospects opening around me." He expects the breaking of the thraldom of falsehood woven over the human mind; and, more definitely, hopes that the Reform Bill will prevail. Yet he is oppressed by the gloom hanging over the booksellers' trade, which he thinks will continue until reform and cholera have passed away.
During the last months of his residence in England, the author renewed his impressions of Stratford (the grateful landlady of the Red Horse Inn showed him a poker which was locked up among the treasures of her house, on which she had caused to be engraved "Geoffrey Crayon's Sceptre"); spent some time at Newstead Abbey; and had the sorrowful pleasure in London of seeing Scott once more, and for the last time. The great novelist, in the sad eclipse of his powers, was staying in the city, on his way to Italy, and Mr. Lockhart asked Irving to dine with him. It was but a melancholy repast. "Ah," said Scott, as Irving gave him his arm, after dinner, "the times are changed, my good fellow, since we went over the Eildon Hills together. It is all nonsense to tell a man that his mind is not affected when his body is in this state."
Irving retired from the legation in September, 1831, to return home, the longing to see his native land having become intense; but his arrival in New York was delayed till May, 1832.
If he had any doubts of the sentiments of his countrymen toward him, his reception in New York dissipated them. America greeted her most famous literary man with a spontaneous outburst of love and admiration. The public banquet in New York, that was long remembered for its brilliancy, was followed by the tender of the same tribute in other cities, an honor which his unconquerable shrinking from this kind of publicity compelled him to decline.
The "Dutch Herodotus, Diedrich Knickerbocker," to use the phrase of a toast, having come out of one such encounter with fair credit, did not care to tempt Providence further. The thought of making a dinner-table speech threw him into a sort of whimsical panic,—a noble infirmity, which characterized also Hawthorne and Thackeray.
The enthusiasm manifested for the homesick author was equaled by his own for the land and the people he supremely loved. Nor was his surprise at the progress made during seventeen years less than his delight in it. His native place had become a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants; the accumulation of wealth and the activity of trade astonished him, and the literary stir was scarcely less unexpected. The steamboat had come to be used, so that he seemed to be transported from place to place by magic; and on a near view the politics of America seemed not less interesting than those of Europe. The nullification battle was set; the currency conflict still raged; it was a time of inflation and land speculation; the West, every day more explored and opened, was the land of promise for capital and energy. Fortunes were made in a day by buying lots in "paper towns." Into some of these speculations Irving put his savings; the investments were as permanent as they were unremunerative.
Irving's first desire, however, on his recovery from the state of astonishment into which these changes plunged him, was to make himself thoroughly acquainted with the entire country and its development. To this end he made an extended tour in the South and West, which passed beyond the bounds of frontier settlement. The fruit of his excursion into the Pawnee country, on the waters of the Arkansas, a region untraversed by white men, except solitary trappers, was "A Tour on the Prairies," a sort of romance of reality, which remains to-day as good a description as we have of hunting adventure on the plains. It led also to the composition of other books on the West, which were more or less mere pieces of book-making for the market.
Our author was far from idle. Indeed, he could not afford to be. Although he had received considerable sums from his books, and perhaps enough for his own simple wants, the responsibility of the support of his two brothers, Peter and Ebenezer, and several nieces, devolved upon him. And, besides, he had a longing to make himself a home, where he could pursue his calling undisturbed, and indulge the sweets of domestic and rural life, which of all things lay nearest his heart. And these two undertakings compelled him to be diligent with his pen to the end of his life. The spot he chose for his "Roost" was a little farm on the bank of the river at Tarrytown, close to his old Sleepy Hollow haunt, one of the loveliest, if not the most picturesque, situations on the Hudson. At first he intended nothing more than a summer retreat, inexpensive and simply furnished. But his experience was that of all who buy, and renovate, and build. The farm had on it a small stone Dutch cottage, built about a century before, and inhabited by one of the Van Tassels. This was enlarged, still preserving the quaint Dutch characteristics; it acquired a tower and a whimsical weather-cock, the delight of the owner ("it was brought from Holland by Gill Davis, the King of Coney Island, who says he got it from a windmill which they were demolishing at the gate of Rotterdam, which windmill has been mentioned in 'Knickerbocker'"), and became one of the most snug and picturesque residences on the river. When the slip of Melrose ivy, which was brought over from Scotland by Mrs. Renwick and given to the author, had grown and well overrun it, the house, in the midst of sheltering groves and secluded walks, was as pretty a retreat as a poet could desire. But the little nook proved to have an insatiable capacity for swallowing up money, as the necessities of the author's establishment increased: there was always something to be done to the grounds; some alterations in the house; a greenhouse, a stable, a gardener's cottage, to be built,—and to the very end the outlay continued. The cottage necessitated economy in other personal expenses, and incessant employment of his pen. But Sunnyside, as the place was named, became the dearest spot on earth to him; it was his residence, from which he tore himself with reluctance, and to which he returned with eager longing; and here, surround by relatives whom he loved, he passed nearly all the remainder of his years, in as happy conditions, I think, as a bachelor ever enjoyed. His intellectual activity was unremitting, he had no lack of friends, there was only now and then a discordant note in the general estimation of his literary work, and he was the object of the most tender care from his nieces. Already, he writes, in October, 1838, "my little cottage is well stocked. I have Ebenezer's five girls, and himself also, whenever he can be spared from town; sister Catherine and her daughter; Mr. Davis occasionally, with casual visits from all the rest of our family connection. The cottage, therefore, is never lonely." I like to dwell in thought upon this happy home, a real haven of rest after many wanderings; a seclusion broken only now and then by enforced absence, like that in Madrid as minister, but enlivened by many welcome guests. Perhaps the most notorious of these was a young Frenchman, a "somewhat quiet guest," who, after several months' imprisonment on board a French man-of-war, was set on shore at Norfolk, and spent a couple of months in New York and its vicinity, in 1837. This visit was vividly recalled by Irving in a letter to his sister, Mrs. Storrow, who was in Paris in 1853, and had just been presented at court:
"Louis Napoleon and Eugenie Montijo, Emperor and Empress of France! one of whom I have had a guest at my cottage on the Hudson; the other, whom, when a child, I have had on my knee at Granada. It seems to cap the climax of the strange dramas of which Paris has been the theatre during my lifetime. I have repeatedly thought that each grand coup de theatre would be the last that would occur in my time; but each has been succeeded by another equally striking; and what will be the next, who can conjecture?
"The last time I saw Eugenie Montijo she was one of the reigning belles of Madrid; and she and her giddy circle had swept away my charming young friend, the beautiful and accomplished————, into their career of fashionable dissipation. Now Eugenie is upon a throne, and a voluntary recluse in a convent of one of the most rigorous orders! Poor——! Perhaps, however, her fate may ultimately be the happiest of the two. 'The storm' with her 'is o'er, and she's at rest;' but the other is launched upon a returnless shore, on a dangerous sea, infamous for its tremendous shipwrecks. Am I to live to see the catastrophe of her career, and the end of this suddenly conjured-up empire, which seems to 'be of such stuff as dreams are made of'?"
As we have seen, the large sums Irving earned by his pen were not spent in selfish indulgence. His habits and tastes were simple, and little would have sufficed for his individual needs. He cared not much for money, and seemed to want it only to increase the happiness of those who were confided to his care. A man less warm-hearted and more selfish, in his circumstances, would have settled down to a life of more ease and less responsibility.
To go back to the period of his return to America. He was now past middle life, having returned to New York in his fiftieth year. But he was in the full flow of literary productiveness. I have noted the dates of his achievements, because his development was somewhat tardy compared that of many of his contemporaries; but he had the "staying" qualities. The first crop of his mind was of course the most original; time and experience had toned down his exuberant humor; but the spring of his fancy was as free, his vigor was not abated, and his art was more refined. Some of his best work was yet to be done.
And it is worthy of passing mention, in regard to his later productions, that his admirable sense of literary proportion, which is wanting in many good writers, characterized his work to the end.
High as his position as a man of letters was at this time, the consideration in which he was held was much broader than that,—it was that of one of the first citizens of the Republic. His friends, readers, and admirers were not merely the literary class and the general public, but included nearly all the prominent statesmen of the time. Almost any career in public life would have been open to him if he had lent an ear to their solicitations. But political life was not to his taste, and it would have been fatal to his sensitive spirit. It did not require much self-denial, perhaps, to decline the candidacy for mayor of New York, or the honor of standing for Congress; but he put aside also the distinction of a seat in Mr. Van Buren's cabinet as Secretary of the Navy. His main reason for declining it, aside from a diffidence in his own judgment in public matters, was his dislike of the turmoil of political life in Washington, and his sensitiveness to personal attacks which beset the occupants of high offices. But also he had come to a political divergence with Mr. Van Buren. He liked the man,—he liked almost everybody,—and esteemed him as a friend, but he apprehended trouble from the new direction of the party in power. Irving was almost devoid of party prejudice, and he never seemed to have strongly marked political opinions. Perhaps his nearest confession to a creed is contained in a letter he wrote to a member of the House of Representatives, Gouverneur Kemble, a little time before the offer of a position in the cabinet, in which he said that he did not relish some points of Van Buren's policy, nor believe in the honesty of some of his elbow counselors. I quote a passage from it:
"As far as I know my own mind, I am thoroughly a republican, and attached, from complete conviction, to the institutions of my country; but I am a republican without gall, and have no bitterness in my creed. I have no relish for Puritans, either in religion or politics, who are for pushing principles to an extreme, and for overturning everything that stands in the way of their own zealous career . . . . Ours is a government of compromise. We have several great and distinct interests bound up together, which, if not separately consulted and severally accommodated, may harass and impair each other . . . . I always distrust the soundness of political councils that are accompanied by acrimonious and disparaging attacks upon any great class of our fellow-citizens. Such are those urged to the disadvantage of the great trading and financial classes of our country."
During the ten years preceding his mission to Spain, Irving kept fagging away at the pen, doing a good deal of miscellaneous and ephemeral work. Among his other engagements was that of regular contributor to the "Knickerbocker Magazine," for a salary of two thousand dollars. He wrote the editor that he had observed that man, as he advances in life, is subject to a plethora of the mind, occasioned by an accumulation of wisdom upon the brain, and that he becomes fond of telling long stories and doling out advice, to the annoyance of his friends. To avoid becoming the bore of the domestic circle, he proposed to ease off this surcharge of the intellect by inflicting his tediousness on the public through the pages of the periodical. The arrangement brought reputation to the magazine (which was published in the days when the honor of being in print was supposed by the publisher to be ample compensation to the scribe), but little profit to Mr. Irving. During this period he interested himself in an international copyright, as a means of fostering our young literature. He found that a work of merit, written by an American who had not established a commanding name in the market, met very cavalier treatment from our publishers, who frankly said that they need not trouble themselves about native works, when they could pick up every day successful books from the British press, for which they had to pay no copyright. Irving's advocacy of the proposed law was entirely unselfish, for his own market was secure.
His chief works in these ten years were, "A Tour on the Prairies," "Recollections of Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey," "The Legends of the Conquest of Spain," "Astoria" (the heavy part of the work of it was done by his nephew Pierre), "Captain Bonneville," and a number of graceful occasional papers, collected afterwards under the title of "Wolfert's Roost." Two other books may properly be mentioned here, although they did not appear until after his return from his absence of four years and a half at the court of Madrid; these are the "Biography of Goldsmith" and "Mahomet and his Successors." At the age of sixty-six he laid aside the "Life of Washington," on which he was engaged, and rapidly threw off these two books. The "Goldsmith" was enlarged from a sketch he had made twenty-five years before. It is an exquisite, sympathetic piece of work, without pretension or any subtle verbal analysis, but on the whole an excellent interpretation of the character. Author and subject had much in common: Irving had at least a kindly sympathy for the vagabondish inclinations of his predecessor, and with his humorous and cheerful regard of the world; perhaps it is significant of a deeper unity in character that both, at times, fancied they could please an intolerant world by attempting to play the flute. The "Mahomet" is a popular narrative, which throws no new light on the subject; it is pervaded by the author's charm of style and equity of judgment, but it lacks the virility of Gibbon's masterly picture of the Arabian prophet and the Saracenic onset.
We need not dwell longer upon this period. One incident of it, however, cannot be passed in silence—that was the abandonment of his lifelong project of writing the History of the Conquest of Mexico to Mr. William H. Prescott. It had been a scheme of his boyhood; he had made collections of materials for it during his first residence in Spain; and he was actually and absorbedly engaged in the composition of the first chapters, when he was sounded by Mr. Cogswell, of the Astor Library, in behalf of Mr. Prescott. Some conversation showed that Mr. Prescott was contemplating the subject upon which Mr. Irving was engaged, and the latter instantly authorized Mr. Cogswell to say that he abandoned it. Although our author was somewhat far advanced, and Mr. Prescott had not yet collected his materials, Irving renounced the glorious theme in such a manner that Prescott never suspected the pain and loss it cost him, nor the full extent of his own obligation. Some years afterwards Irving wrote to his nephew that in giving it up he in a manner gave up his bread, as he had no other subject to supply its place: "I was," he wrote, "dismounted from my cheval de bataille, and have never been completely mounted since." But he added that he was not sorry for the warm impulse that induced him to abandon the subject, and that Mr. Prescott's treatment of it had justified his opinion of him. Notwithstanding Prescott's very brilliant work, we cannot but feel some regret that Irving did not write a Conquest of Mexico. His method, as he outlined it, would have been the natural one. Instead of partially satisfying the reader's curiosity in a preliminary essay, in which the Aztec civilization was exposed, Irving would have begun with the entry of the conquerors, and carried his reader step by step onward, letting him share all the excitement and surprise of discovery which the invaders experienced, and learn of the wonders of the country in the manner most likely to impress both the imagination and the memory; and with his artistic sense of the value of the picturesque he would have brought into strong relief the dramatis personae of the story.
In 1842 Irving was tendered the honor of the mission to Madrid. It was an entire surprise to himself and to his friends. He came to look upon this as the "crowning honor of his life," and yet when the news first reached him, he paced up and down his room, excited and astonished, revolving in his mind the separation from home and friends, and was heard murmuring, half to himself and half to his nephew: "It is hard,—very hard; yet I must try to bear it. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb." His acceptance of the position was doubtless influenced by the intended honor to his profession, by the gratifying manner in which it came to him, by his desire to please his friends, and the belief, which was a delusion, that diplomatic life in Madrid would offer no serious interruption to his "Life of Washington," in which he had just become engaged. The nomination, the suggestion of Daniel Webster, Tyler's Secretary of State, was cordially approved by the President and cabinet, and confirmed almost by acclamation in the Senate. "Ah," said Mr. Clay, who was opposing nearly all the President's appointments, "this is a nomination everybody will concur in!" "If a person of more merit and higher qualification," wrote Mr. Webster in his official notification, "had presented himself, great as is my personal regard for you, I should have yielded it to higher considerations."
No other appointment could have been made so complimentary to Spain, and it remains to this day one of the most honorable to his own country.
In reading Irving's letters written during his third visit abroad, you are conscious that the glamour of life is gone for him, though not his kindliness towards the world, and that he is subject to few illusions; the show and pageantry no longer enchant,—they only weary. The novelty was gone, and he was no longer curious to see great sights and great people. He had declined a public dinner in New York, and he put aside the same hospitality offered by Liverpool and by Glasgow. In London he attended the Queen's grand fancy ball, which surpassed anything he had seen in splendor and picturesque effect. "The personage," he writes, "who appeared least to enjoy the scene seemed to me to be the little Queen herself. She was flushed and heated, and evidently fatigued and oppressed with the state she had to keep up and the regal robes in which she was arrayed, and especially by a crown of gold, which weighed heavy on her brow, and to which she was continually raising her hand to move it slightly when it pressed. I hope and trust her real crown sits easier." The bearing of Prince Albert he found prepossessing, and he adds, "He speaks English very well;" as if that were a useful accomplishment for an English Prince Consort. His reception at court and by the ministers and diplomatic corps was very kind, and he greatly enjoyed meeting his old friends, Leslie, Rogers, and Moore. At Paris, in an informal presentation to the royal family, he experienced a very cordial welcome from the King and Queen and Madame Adelaide, each of whom took occasion to say something complimentary about his writings; but he escaped as soon as possible from social engagements. "Amidst all the splendors of London and Paris, I find my imagination refuses to take fire, and my heart still yearns after dear little Sunnyside." Of an anxious friend in Paris, who thought Irving was ruining his prospects by neglecting to leave his card with this or that duchess who had sought his acquaintance, he writes: "He attributes all this to very excessive modesty, not dreaming that the empty intercourse of saloons with people of rank and fashion could be a bore to one who has run the rounds of society for the greater part of half a century, and who likes to consult his own humor and pursuits."
When Irving reached Madrid, the affairs of the kingdom had assumed a powerful dramatic interest, wanting in none of the romantic elements that characterize the whole history of the peninsula. "The future career [he writes of this gallant soldier, Espartero, whose merits and services have placed him at the head of the government, and the future fortunes of these isolated little princesses, the Queen and her sister], have an uncertainty hanging about them worthy of the fifth act in a melodrama." The drama continued, with constant shifting of scene, as long as Irving remained in Spain, and gave to his diplomatic life intense interest, and at times perilous excitement. His letters are full of animated pictures of the changing progress of the play; and although they belong rather to the gossip of history than to literary biography, they cannot be altogether omitted. The duties which the minister had to perform were unusual, delicate, and difficult; but I believe he acquitted himself of them with the skill of a born diplomatist. When he went to Spain before, in 1826, Ferdinand VII. was, by aid of French troops, on the throne, the liberties of the kingdom were crushed, and her most enlightened men were in exile. While he still resided there, in 1829, Ferdinand married, for his fourth wife, Maria Christina, sister of the King of Naples, and niece of the Queen of Louis Philippe. By her he had two daughters, his only children. In order that his own progeny might succeed him, he set aside the Salique law (which had been imposed by France) just before his death, in 1833, and revived the old Spanish law of succession. His eldest daughter, then three years old, was proclaimed Queen by the name of Isabella II, and her mother guardian during her minority, which would end at the age of fourteen. Don Carlos, the king's eldest brother, immediately set up the standard of rebellion, supported by the absolutist aristocracy, the monks, and a great part of the clergy. The liberals rallied to the Queen. The Queen Regent did not, however, act in good faith with the popular party she resisted all salutary reform, would not restore the Constitution of 1812 until compelled to by a popular uprising, and disgraced herself by a scandalous connection with one Munos, one of the royal bodyguards. She enriched this favorite and amassed a vast fortune for herself, which she sent out of the country. In 1839, when Don Carlos was driven out of the country by the patriot soldier Espartero, she endeavored to gain him over to her side, but failed. Espartero became Regent, and Maria Christina repaired to Paris, where she was received with great distinction by Louis Philippe, and Paris became the focus of all sorts of machinations against the constitutional government of Spain, and of plots for its overthrow. One of these had just been defeated at the time of Irving's arrival. It was a desperate attempt of a band of soldiers of the rebel army to carry off the little Queen and her sister, which was frustrated only by the gallant resistance of the halberdiers in the palace. The little princesses had scarcely recovered from the horror of this night attack when our minister presented his credentials to the Queen through the Regent, thus breaking a diplomatic deadlock, in which he was followed by all the other embassies except the French. I take some passages from the author's description of his first audience at the royal palace:
"We passed through the spacious court, up the noble staircase, and through the long suites of apartments of this splendid edifice, most of them silent and vacant, the casements closed to keep out the heat, so that a twilight reigned throughout the mighty pile, not a little emblematical of the dubious fortunes of its inmates. It seemed more like traversing a convent than a palace. I ought to have mentioned that in ascending the grand staircase we found the portal at the head of it, opening into the royal suite of apartments, still bearing the marks of the midnight attack upon the palace in October last, when an attempt was made to get possession of the persons of the little Queen and her sister, to carry them off . . . . The marble casements of the doors had been shattered in several places, and the double doors themselves pierced all over with bullet holes, from the musketry that played upon them from the staircase during that eventful night. What must have been the feelings of those poor children, on listening, from their apartment, to the horrid tumult, the outcries of a furious multitude, and the reports of firearms echoing and reverberating through the vaulted halls and spacious courts of this immense edifice, and dubious whether their own lives were not the object of the assault!
"After passing through various chambers of the palace, now silent and sombre, but which I had traversed in former days, on grand court occasions in the time of Ferdinand VII, when they were glittering with all the splendor of a court, we paused in a great saloon, with high-vaulted ceiling incrusted with florid devices in porcelain, and hung with silken tapestry, but all in dim twilight, like the rest of the palace. At one end of the saloon the door opened to an almost interminable range of other chambers, through which, at a distance, we had a glimpse of some indistinct figures in black. They glided into the saloon slowly, and with noiseless steps. It was the little Queen, with her governess, Madame Mina, widow of the general of that name, and her guardian, the excellent Arguelles, all in deep mourning for the Duke of Orleans. The little Queen advanced some steps within the saloon and then paused. Madame Mina took her station a little distance behind her. The Count Almodovar then introduced me to the Queen in my official capacity, and she received me with a grave and quiet welcome, expressed in a very low voice. She is nearly twelve years of age, and is sufficiently well grown for her years. She had a somewhat fair complexion, quite pale, with bluish or light gray eyes; a grave demeanor, but a graceful deportment. I could not but regard her with deep interest, knowing what important concerns depended upon the life of this fragile little being, and to what a stormy and precarious career she might be destined. Her solitary position, also, separated from all her kindred except her little sister, a mere effigy of royalty in the hands of statesmen, and surrounded by the formalities and ceremonials of state, which spread sterility around the occupant of a throne."
I have quoted this passage, not more on account of its intrinsic interest, than as a specimen of the author's consummate art of conveying an impression by what I may call the tone of his style; and this appears in all his correspondence relating to this picturesque and eventful period. During the four years of his residence the country was in a constant state of excitement and often of panic. Armies were marching over the kingdom. Madrid was in a state of siege, expecting an assault at one time; confusion reigned amid the changing adherents about the person of the child-queen. The duties of a minister were perplexing enough, when the Spanish government was changing its character and its personnel with the rapidity of shifting scenes in a pantomime. "This consumption of ministers," wrote Irving to Mr. Webster, "is appalling. To carry on a negotiation with such transient functionaries is like bargaining at the window of a railroad-car: before you can get a reply to a proposition the other party is out of sight."
Apart from politics, Irving's residence was full of half-melancholy recollections and associations. In a letter to his old comrade, Prince Polgorouki, then Russian Minister at Naples, he recalls the days of their delightful intercourse at the D'Oubrils':
"Time dispels charms and illusions. You remember how much I was struck with a beautiful young woman (I will not mention names) who appeared in a tableau as Murillo's Virgin of the Assumption? She was young, recently married, fresh and unhackneyed in society, and my imagination decked her out with everything that was pure, lovely, innocent, and angelic in womanhood. She was pointed out to me in the theatre shortly after my arrival in Madrid. I turned with eagerness to the original of the picture that had ever remained hung up in sanctity in my mind. I found her still handsome, though somewhat matronly in appearance, seated, with her daughters, in the box of a fashionable nobleman, younger than herself, rich in purse but poor in intellect, and who was openly and notoriously her cavalier servante. The charm was broken, the picture fell from the wall. She may have the customs of a depraved country and licentious state of society to excuse her; but I can never think of her again in the halo of feminine purity and loveliness that surrounded the Virgin of Murillo."
During Irving's ministry he was twice absent, briefly in Paris and London, and was called to the latter place for consultation in regard to the Oregon boundary dispute, in the settlement of which he rendered valuable service. Space is not given me for further quotations from Irving's brilliant descriptions of court, characters, and society in that revolutionary time, nor of his half-melancholy pilgrimage to the southern scenes of his former reveries. But I will take a page from a letter to his sister, Mrs. Paris, describing his voyage from Barcelona to Marseilles, which exhibits the lively susceptibility of the author and diplomat who was then in his sixty-first year:
"While I am writing at a table in the cabin, I am sensible of the power of a pair of splendid Spanish eyes which are occasionally flashing upon me, and which almost seem to throw a light upon the paper. Since I cannot break the spell, I will describe the owner of them. She is a young married lady, about four or five and twenty, middle sized, finely modeled, a Grecian outline of face, a complexion sallow yet healthful, raven black hair, eyes dark, large, and beaming, softened by long eyelashes, lips full and rosy red, yet finely chiseled, and teeth of dazzling whiteness. She is dressed in black, as if in mourning; on one hand is a black glove; the other hand, ungloved, is small, exquisitely formed, with taper fingers and blue veins. She has just put it up to adjust her clustering black locks. I never saw female hand more exquisite. Really, if I were a young man, I should not be able to draw the portrait of this beautiful creature so calmly.
"I was interrupted in my letter writing, by an observation of the lady whom I was describing. She had caught my eye occasionally, as it glanced from my letter toward her. 'Really, Senor,' said she, at length, with a smile, I one would think you were a painter taking my likeness.' I could not resist the impulse. 'Indeed,' said I, 'I am taking it; I am writing to a friend the other side of the world, discussing things that are passing before me, and I could not help noting down one of the best specimens of the country that I had met with: A little bantering took place between the young lady, her husband, and myself, which ended in my reading off, as well as I could into Spanish, the description I had just written down. It occasioned a world of merriment, and was taken in excellent part. The lady's cheek, for once, mantled with the rose. She laughed, shook her head, and said I was a very fanciful portrait painter; and the husband declared that, if I would stop at St. Filian, all the ladies in the place would crowd to have their portraits taken, —my pictures were so flattering. I have just parted with them. The steamship stopped in the open sea, just in front of the little bay of St. Filian; boats came off from shore for the party. I helped the beautiful original of the portrait into the boat, and promised her and her husband if ever I should come to St. Filian I would pay them a visit. The last I noticed of her was a Spanish farewell wave of her beautiful white hand, and the gleam of her dazzling teeth as she smiled adieu. So there 's a very tolerable touch of romance for a gentleman of my years."
When Irving announced his recall from the court of Madrid, the young Queen said to him in reply: "You may take with you into private life the intimate conviction that your frank and loyal conduct has contributed to draw closer the amicable relations which exist between North America and the Spanish nation, and that your distinguished personal merits have gained in my heart the appreciation which you merit by more than one title." The author was anxious to return. From the midst of court life in April, 1845, he had written: "I long to be once more back at dear little Sunnyside, while I have yet strength and good spirits to enjoy the simple pleasures of the country, and to rally a happy family group once more about me. I grudge every year of absence that rolls by. To-morrow is my birthday. I shall then be sixty-two years old. The evening of life is fast drawing over me; still I hope to get back among my friends while there is a little sunshine left."
It was the 19th of September, 1846, says his biographer, "when the impatient longing of his heart was gratified, and he found himself restored to his home for the thirteen years of happy life still remaining to him."
The "Knickerbocker's History of New York" and the "Sketch-Book" never would have won for Irving the gold medal of the Royal Society of Literature, or the degree of D. C. L. from Oxford.
However much the world would have liked frankly to honor the writer for that which it most enjoyed and was under most obligations for, it would have been a violent shock to the constitution of things to have given such honor to the mere humorist and the writer of short sketches. The conventional literary proprieties must be observed. Only some laborious, solid, and improving work of the pen could sanction such distinction,—a book of research or an historical composition. It need not necessarily be dull, but it must be grave in tone and serious in intention, in order to give the author high recognition.
Irving himself shared this opinion. He hoped, in the composition of his "Columbus" and his "Washington," to produce works which should justify the good opinion his countrymen had formed of him, should reasonably satisfy the expectations excited by his lighter books, and should lay for him the basis of enduring reputation. All that he had done before was the play of careless genius, the exercise of frolicsome fancy, which might amuse and perhaps win an affectionate regard for the author, but could not justify a high respect or secure a permanent place in literature. For this, some work of scholarship and industry was needed.
And yet everybody would probably have admitted that there was but one man then living who could have created and peopled the vast and humorous world of the Knickerbockers; that all the learning of Oxford and Cambridge together would not enable a man to draw the whimsical portrait of Ichabod Crane, or to outline the fascinating legend of Rip Van Winkle; while Europe was full of scholars of more learning than Irving, and writers of equal skill in narrative, who might have told the story of Columbus as well as he told it and perhaps better. The under-graduates of Oxford who hooted their admiration of the shy author when he appeared in the theater to receive his complimentary degree perhaps understood this, and expressed it in their shouts of "Diedrich Knickerbocker," "Ichabod Crane," "Rip Van Winkle."
Irving's "gift" was humor; and allied to this was sentiment. These qualities modified and restrained each other; and it was by these that he touched the heart. He acquired other powers which he himself may have valued more highly, and which brought him more substantial honors; but the historical compositions, which he and his contemporaries regarded as a solid basis of fame, could be spared without serious loss, while the works of humor, the first fruits of his genius, are possessions in English literature the loss of which would be irreparable. The world may never openly allow to humor a position "above the salt," but it clings to its fresh and original productions, generation after generation, finding room for them in its accumulating literary baggage, while more "important" tomes of scholarship and industry strew the line of its march.
I feel that this study of Irving as a man of letters would be incomplete, especially for the young readers of this generation, if it did not contain some more extended citations from those works upon which we have formed our estimate of his quality. We will take first a few passages from the—"History of New York".
It has been said that Irving lacked imagination. That, while he had humor and feeling and fancy, he was wanting in the higher quality, which is the last test of genius. We have come to attach to the word "imagination" a larger meaning than the mere reproduction in the mind of certain absent objects of sense that have been perceived; there must be a suggestion of something beyond these, and an ennobling suggestion, if not a combination, that amounts to a new creation. Now, it seems to me that the transmutation of the crude and heretofore unpoetical materials which he found in the New World into what is as absolute a creation as exists in literature, was a distinct work of the imagination. Its humorous quality does not interfere with its largeness of outline, nor with its essential poetic coloring. For, whimsical and comical as is the Knickerbocker creation, it is enlarged to the proportion of a realm, and over that new country of the imagination is always the rosy light of sentiment.
This largeness of modified conception cannot be made apparent in such brief extracts as we can make, but they will show its quality and the author's humor. The Low-Dutch settlers of the Nieuw Nederlandts are supposed to have sailed from Amsterdam in a ship called the Goede Vrouw, built by the carpenters of that city, who always model their ships on the fair forms of their countrywomen. This vessel, whose beauteous model was declared to be the greatest belle in Amsterdam, had one hundred feet in the beam, one hundred feet in the keel, and one hundred feet from the bottom of the stern-post to the taffrail. Those illustrious adventurers who sailed in her landed on the Jersey flats, preferring a marshy ground, where they could drive piles and construct dykes. They made a settlement at the Indian village of Communipaw, the egg from which was hatched the mighty city of New York. In the author's time this place had lost its importance:
"Communipaw is at present but a small village, pleasantly situated, among rural scenery, on that beauteous part of the Jersey shore which was known in ancient legends by the name of Pavonia, —[Pavonia, in the ancient maps, is given to a tract of country extending from about Hoboken to Amboy]—and commands a grand prospect of the superb bay of New York. It is within but half an hour's sail of the latter place, provided you have a fair wind, and may be distinctly seen from the city. Nay, it is a well known fact, which I can testify from my own experience, that on a clear still summer evening, you may hear, from the Battery of New York, the obstreperous peals of broad-mouthed laughter of the Dutch negroes at Communipaw, who, like most other negroes, are famous for their risible powers. This is peculiarly the case on Sunday evenings, when, it is remarked by an ingenious and observant philosopher, who has made great discoveries in the neighborhood of this city, that they always laugh loudest, which he attributes to the circumstance of their having their holiday clothes on.
"These negroes, in fact, like the monks of the dark ages, engross all the knowledge of the place, and being infinitely more adventurous and more knowing than their masters, carry on all the foreign trade; making frequent voyages to town in canoes loaded with oysters, buttermilk, and cabbages. They are great astrologers, predicting the different changes of weather almost as accurately as an almanac; they are moreover exquisite performers on three-stringed fiddles; in whistling they almost boast the far-famed powers of Orpheus's lyre, for not a horse or an ox in the place, when at the plough or before the wagon, will budge a foot until he hears the well-known whistle of his black driver and companion. And from their amazing skill at casting up accounts upon their fingers, they are regarded with as much veneration as were the disciples of Pythagoras of yore, when initiated into the sacred quaternary of numbers.
"As to the honest burghers of Communipaw, like wise men and sound philosophers, they never look beyond their pipes, nor trouble their heads about any affairs out of their immediate neighborhood; so that they live in profound and enviable ignorance of all the troubles, anxieties, and revolutions of this distracted planet. I am even told that many among them do verily believe that Holland, of which they have heard so much from tradition, is situated somewhere on Long Island,—that Spiking-devil and the Narrows are the two ends of the world,—that the country is still under the dominion of their High Mightinesses,—and that the city of New York still goes by the name of Nieuw Amsterdam. They meet every Saturday afternoon at the only tavern in the place, which bears as a sign a square-headed likeness of the Prince of Orange, where they smoke a silent pipe, by way of promoting social conviviality, and invariably drink a mug of cider to the success of Admiral Van Tromp, who they imagine is still sweeping the British channel with a broom at his mast-head.
"Communipaw, in short, is one of the numerous little villages in the vicinity of this most beautiful of cities, which are so many strongholds and fastnesses, whither the primitive manners of our Dutch forefathers have retreated, and where they are cherished with devout and scrupulous strictness. The dress of the original settlers is handed down inviolate, from father to son: the identical broad-brimmed hat, broad-skirted coat, and broad-bottomed breeches, continue from generation to generation; and several gigantic knee-buckles of massy silver are still in wear, that made gallant display in the days of the patriarchs of Communipaw. The language likewise continues unadulterated by barbarous innovations; and so critically correct is the village schoolmaster in his dialect, that his reading of a Low-Dutch psalm has much the same effect on the nerves as the filing of a handsaw."
The early prosperity of this settlement is dwelt on with satisfaction by the author:
"The neighboring Indians in a short time became accustomed to the uncouth sound of the Dutch language, and an intercourse gradually took place between them and the new-comers. The Indians were much given to long talks, and the Dutch to long silence;—in this particular, therefore, they accommodated each other completely. The chiefs would make long speeches about the big bull, the Wabash, and the Great Spirit, to which the others would listen very attentively, smoke their pipes, and grunt 'yah, mynher', whereat the poor savages were wondrously delighted. They instructed the new settlers in the best art of curing and smoking tobacco, while the latter, in return, made them drunk with true Hollands—and then taught them the art of making bargains.
"A brisk trade for furs was soon opened; the Dutch traders were scrupulously honest in their dealings and purchased by weight, establishing it as an invariable table of avoirdupois, that the hand of a Dutchman weighed one pound, and his foot two pounds. It is true, the simple Indians were often puzzled by the great disproportion between bulk and weight, for let them place a bundle of furs, never so large, in one scale, and a Dutchman put his hand or foot in the other, the bundle was sure to kick the beam;—never was a package of furs known to weigh more than two pounds in the market of Communipaw!
"This is a singular fact,—but I have it direct from my great-great-grandfather, who had risen to considerable importance in the colony, being promoted to the office of weigh-master, on account of the uncommon heaviness of his foot.
"The Dutch possessions in this part of the globe began now to assume a very thriving appearance, and were comprehended under the general title of Nieuw Nederlandts, on account, as the Sage Vander Donck observes, of their great resemblance to the Dutch Netherlands, —which indeed was truly remarkable, excepting that the former were rugged and mountainous, and the latter level and marshy. About this time the tranquillity of the Dutch colonists was doomed to suffer a temporary interruption. In 1614, Captain Sir Samuel Argal, sailing under a commission from Dale, governor of Virginia, visited the Dutch settlements on Hudson River, and demanded their submission to the English crown and Virginian dominion. To this arrogant demand, as they were in no condition to resist it, they submitted for the time, like discreet and reasonable men.
"It does not appear that the valiant Argal molested the settlement of Communipaw; on the contrary, I am told that when his vessel first hove in sight, the worthy burghers were seized with such a panic, that they fell to smoking their pipes with astonishing vehemence; insomuch that they quickly raised a cloud, which, combining with the surrounding woods and marshes, completely enveloped and concealed their beloved village, and overhung the fair regions of Pavoniaso that the terrible Captain Argal passed on totally unsuspicious that a sturdy little Dutch settlement lay snugly couched in the mud, under cover of all this pestilent vapor. In commemoration of this fortunate escape, the worthy inhabitants have continue, to smoke, almost without intermission, unto this very day; which is said to be the cause of the remarkable fog which often hangs over Communipaw of a clear afternoon."
The golden age of New York was under the reign of Walter Van Twiller, the first governor of the province, and the best it ever had. In his sketch of this excellent magistrate Irving has embodied the abundance and tranquillity of those halcyon days:
"The renowned Wouter (or Walter Van Twiller) was descended from along line of Dutch burgomasters, who had successively dozed awaytheir lives, and grown fat upon the bench of magistracy inRotterdam; and who had comported themselves with such singularwisdom and propriety that they were never either heard or talked of—which, next to being universally applauded, should be the objectof ambition of all magistrates and rulers. There are two oppositeways by which some men make a figure in the world: one, by talkingfaster than they think, and the other, by holding their tongues andnot thinking at all. By the first, many a smatterer acquires thereputation of a man of quick parts; by the other, many a dunderpate,like the owl, the stupidest of birds, comes to be considered thevery type of wisdom. This, by the way, is a casual remark, which Iwould not, for the universe, have it thought I apply to Governor VanTwiller. It is true he was a man shut up within himself, like anoyster, and rarely spoke, except in monosyllables; but then it wasallowed he seldom said a foolish thing. So invincible was hisgravity that he was never known to laugh or even to smile throughthe whole course of along and prosperous life. Nay, if a joke wereuttered in his presence, that set light-minded hearers in a roar, itwas observed to throw him into a state of perplexity. Sometimes hewould deign to inquire into the matter, and when, after muchexplanation, the joke was made as plain as a pikestaff, he wouldcontinue to smoke his pipe in silence, and at length, knocking outthe ashes, would exclaim, 'Well! I see nothing in all that to laughabout.'
"With all his reflective habits, he never made up his mind on a subject. His adherents accounted for this by the astonishing magnitude of his ideas. He conceived every subject on so grand a scale that he had not room in his head to turn it over and examine both sides of it. Certain it is, that, if any matter were propounded to him on which ordinary mortals would rashly determine at first glance, he would put on a vague, mysterious look, shake his capacious head, smoke some time in profound silence, and at length observe, that 'he had his doubts about the matter;' which gained him the reputation of a man slow of belief and not easily imposed upon. What is more, it has gained him a lasting name; for to this habit of the mind has been attributed his surname of Twiller; which is said to be a corruption of the original Twijfler, or, in plain English, Doubter.
"The person of this illustrious old gentleman was formed and proportioned, as though it had been moulded by the hands of some cunning Dutch statuary, as a model of majesty and lordly grandeur. He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five inches in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere, and of such stupendous dimensions, that dame Nature, with all her sex's ingenuity, would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of supporting it; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and settled it firmly on the top of his backbone, just between the shoulders. His body was oblong and particularly capacious at bottom; which was wisely ordered by Providence, seeing that he was a man of sedentary habits, and very averse to the idle labor of walking. His legs were short, but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain; so that when erect he had not a little the appearance of a beer-barrel on skids. His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by any of those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament, and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like a spitzenberg apple.
"His habits were as regular as his person. He daily took his four stated meals, appropriating exactly an hour to each; he smoked and doubted eight hours, and he slept the remaining twelve of the four-and-twenty. Such was the renowned Wouter Van Twiller,—a true philosopher, for his mind was either elevated above, or tranquilly settled below, the cares and perplexities of this world. He had lived in it for years, without feeling the least curiosity to know whether the sun revolved round it, or it round the sun; and he had watched, for at least half a century, the smoke curling from his pipe to the ceiling, without once troubling his head with any of those numerous theories by which a philosopher would have perplexed his brain, in accounting for its rising above the surrounding atmosphere.
"In his council he presided with great state and solemnity. He sat in a huge chair of solid oak, hewn in the celebrated forest of the Hague, fabricated by an experienced timmerman of Amsterdam, and curiously carved about the arms and feet into exact imitations of gigantic eagle's claws. Instead of a sceptre, he swayed a long Turkish pipe, wrought with jasmine and amber, which had been presented to a stadtholder of Holland at the conclusion of a treaty with one of the petty Barbary powers. In this stately chair would he sit, and this magnificent pipe would he smoke, shaking his right knee with a constant motion, and fixing his eye for hours together upon a little print of Amsterdam, which hung in a black frame against the opposite wall of the council-chamber. Nay, it has even been said, that when any deliberation of extraordinary length and intricacy was on the carpet, the renowned Wouter would shut his eyes for full two hours at a time, that he might not be disturbed by external objects; and at such times the internal commotion of his mind was evinced by certain regular guttural sounds, which his admirers declared were merely the noise of conflict, made by his contending doubts and opinions . . . .
"I have been the more anxious to delineate fully the person andhabits of Wouter Van Twiller, from the consideration that he was notonly the first but also the best governor that ever presided overthis ancient and respectable province; and so tranquil andbenevolent was his reign, that I do not find throughout the whole ofit a single instance of any offender being brought to punishment,—a most indubitable sign of a merciful governor, and a caseunparalleled, excepting in the reign of the illustrious King Log,from whom, it is hinted, the renowned Van Twiller was a linealdescendant.
"The very outset of the career of this excellent magistrate was distinguished by an example of legal acumen that gave flattering presage of a wise and equitable administration. The morning after he had been installed in office, and at the moment that he was making his breakfast from a prodigious earthen dish, filled with milk and Indian pudding, he was interrupted by the appearance of Wandle Schoonhoven, a very important old burgher of New Amsterdam, who complained bitterly of one Barent Bleecker, inasmuch as he refused to come to a settlement of accounts, seeing that there was a heavy balance in favor of the said Wandle. Governor Van Twiller, as I have already observed, was a man of few words; he was likewise a mortal enemy to multiplying writings—or being disturbed at his breakfast. Having listened attentively to the statement of Wandle Schoonhoven, giving an occasional grunt, as he shoveled a spoonful of Indian pudding into his mouth,—either as a sign that he relished the dish, or comprehended the story,—he called unto him his constable, and pulling out of his breeches-pocket a huge jackknife, dispatched it after the defendant as a summons, accompanied by his tobacco-box as a warrant.
"This summary process was as effectual in those simple days as was the seal-ring of the great Haroun Alraschid among the true believers. The two parties being confronted before him, each produced a book of accounts, written in a language and character that would have puzzled any but a High-Dutch commentator, or a learned decipherer of Egyptian obelisks. The sage Wouter took them one after the other, and having poised them in his hands, and attentively counted over the number of leaves, fell straightway into a very great doubt, and smoked for half an hour without saying a word; at length, laying his finger beside his nose, and shutting his eyes for a moment, with the air of a man who has just caught a subtle idea by the tail, he slowly took his pipe from his mouth, puffed forth a column of tobacco-smoke, and with marvelous gravity and solemnity pronounced that, having carefully counted over the leaves and weighed the books, it was found that one was just as thick and as heavy as the other: therefore, it was the final opinion of the court that the accounts were equally balanced: therefore, Wandle should give Barent a receipt, and Barent should give Wandle a receipt, and the constable should pay the costs. This decision, being straightway made known, diffused general joy throughout New Amsterdam, for the people immediately perceived that they had a very wise and equitable magistrate to rule over them. But its happiest effect was, that not another lawsuit took place throughout the whole of his administration; and the office of constable fell into such decay that there was not one of those losel scouts known in the province for many years. I am the more particular in dwelling on this transaction, not only because I deem it one of the most sage and righteous judgments on record, and well worthy the attention of modern magistrates, but because it was a miraculous event in the history of the renowned Wouter—being the only time he was ever known to come to a decision in the whole course of his life."
This peaceful age ended with the accession of William the Testy, and the advent of the enterprising Yankees. During the reigns of William Kieft and Peter Stuyvesant, between the Yankees of the Connecticut and the Swedes of the Delaware, the Dutch community knew no repose, and the "History" is little more than a series of exhausting sieges and desperate battles, which would have been as heroic as any in history if they had been attended with loss of life. The forces that were gathered by Peter Stuyvesant for the expedition to avenge upon the Swedes the defeat at Fort Casimir, and their appearance on the march, give some notion of the military prowess of the Dutch. Their appearance, when they were encamped on the Bowling Green, recalls the Homeric age:
"In the centre, then, was pitched the tent of the men of battle of the Manhattoes, who, being the inmates of the metropolis, composed the lifeguards of the governor. These were commanded by the valiant Stoffel Brinkerhoof, who whilom had acquired such immortal fame at Oyster Bay; they displayed as a standard a beaver rampant on a field of orange, being the arms of the province, and denoting the persevering industry and the amphibious origin of the Nederlands.
"On their right hand might be seen the vassals of that renowned Mynheer, Michael Paw, who lorded it over the fair regions of ancient Pavonia, and the lands away south even unto the Navesink Mountains, and was, moreover, patroon of Gibbet Island. His standard was borne by his trusty squire, Cornelius Van Vorst; consisting of a huge oyster recumbent upon a sea-green field; being the armorial bearings of his favorite metropolis, Communipaw. He brought to the camp a stout force of warriors, heavily armed, being each clad in ten pair of linsey-woolsey breeches, and overshadowed by broad-brimmed beavers, with short pipes twisted in their hatbands. These were the men who vegetated in the mud along the shores of Pavonia, being of the race of genuine copperheads, and were fabled to have sprung from oysters.
"At a little distance was encamped the tribe of warriors who came from the neighborhood of Hell-gate. These were commanded by the Suy Dams, and the Van Dams,—incontinent hard swearers, as their names betoken. They were terrible looking fellows, clad in broad-skirted gaberdines, of that curious colored cloth called thunder and lightning, and bore as a standard three devil's darning-needles, volant, in a flame-colored field.
"Hard by was the tent of the men of battle from the marshy borders of the Waale-Boght and the country thereabouts. These were of a sour aspect, by reason that they lived on crabs, which abound in these parts. They were the first institutors of that honorable order of knighthood called Fly-market shirks, and, if tradition speak true, did likewise introduce the far-famed step in dancing called 'double trouble.' They were commanded by the fearless Jacobus Varra Vanger,—and had, moreover, a jolly band of Breuckelen ferry-men, who performed a brave concerto on conch shells.
"But I refrain from pursuing this minute description, which goes on to describe the warriors of Bloemen-dael, and Weehawk, and Hoboken, and sundry other places, well known in history and song; for now do the notes of martial music alarm the people of New Amsterdam, sounding afar from beyond the walls of the city. But this alarm was in a little while relieved, for lo! from the midst of a vast cloud of dust, they recognized the brimstone-colored breeches and splendid silver leg of Peter Stuyvesant, glaring in the sunbeams; and beheld him approaching at the head of a formidable army, which he had mustered along the banks of the Hudson. And here the excellent but anonymous writer of the Stuyvesant manuscript breaks out into a brave and glorious description of the forces, as they defiled through the principal gate of the city, that stood by the head of Wall Street.
"First of all came the Van Bummels, who inhabit the pleasant borders of the Bronx: these were short fat men, wearing exceeding large trunk-breeches, and were renowned for feats of the trencher. They were the first inventors of suppawn, or mush and milk.—Close in their rear marched the Van Vlotens, of Kaatskill, horrible quaffers of new cider, and arrant braggarts in their liquor.—After them came the Van Pelts of Groodt Esopus, dexterous horsemen, mounted upon goodly switch-tailed steeds of the Esopus breed. These were mighty hunters of minks and musk-rats, whence came the word Peltry. —Then the Van Nests of Kinderhoeck, valiant robbers of birds'-nests, as their name denotes. To these, if report may be believed, are we indebted for the invention of slap-jacks, or buckwheat-cakes.—Then the Van Higginbottoms, of Wapping's creek. These came armed with ferules and birchen rods, being a race of schoolmasters, who first discovered the marvelous sympathy between the seat of honor and the seat of intellect,—and that the shortest way to get knowledge into the head was to hammer it into the bottom.—Then the Van Grolls, of Antony's Nose, who carried their liquor in fair, round little pottles, by reason they could not house it out of their canteens, having such rare long noses. Then the Gardeniers, of Hudson and thereabouts, distinguished by many triumphant feats, such as robbing watermelon patches, smoking rabbits out of their holes, and the like, and by being great lovers of roasted pigs' tails. These were the ancestors of the renowned congressman of that name.—-Then the Van Hoesens, of Sing-Sing, great choristers and players upon the jew's-harp. These marched two and two, singing the great song of St. Nicholas. Then the Couenhovens, of Sleepy Hollow. These gave birth to a jolly race of publicans, who first discovered the magic artifice of conjuring a quart of wine into a pint bottle.—Then the Van Kortlandts, who lived on the wild banks of the Croton, and were great killers of wild ducks, being much spoken of for their skill in shooting with the long bow.—Then the Van Bunschotens, of Nyack and Kakiat, who were the first that did ever kick with the left foot. They were gallant bushwhackers and hunters of raccoons by moonlight.—Then the Van Winkles, of Haerlem, potent suckers of eggs, and noted for running of horses, and running up of scores at taverns. They were the first that ever winked with both eyes at once.—Lastly came the KNICKERBOCKERS, of the great town of Scaghtikoke, where the folk lay stones upon the houses in windy weather, lest they should be blown away. These derive their name, as some say, from Knicker, to shake, and Beker, a goblet, indicating thereby that they were sturdy tosspots of yore; but, in truth, it was derived from Knicker, to nod, and Boeken, books: plainly meaning that they were great nodders or dozers over books. From them did descend the writer of this history."
In the midst of Irving's mock-heroics, he always preserves a substratum of good sense. An instance of this is the address of the redoubtable wooden-legged governor, on his departure at the head of his warriors to chastise the Swedes:
"Certain it is, not an old woman in New Amsterdam but considered Peter Stuyvesant as a tower of strength, and rested satisfied that the public welfare was secure so long as he was in the city. It is not surprising, then, that they looked upon his departure as a sore affliction. With heavy hearts they draggled at the heels of his troop, as they marched down to the river-side to embark. The governor, from the stern of his schooner, gave a short but truly patriarchal address to his citizens, wherein he recommended them to comport like loyal and peaceable subjects,—to go to church regularly on Sundays, and to mind their business all the week besides. That the women should be dutiful and affectionate to their husbands,—looking after nobody's concerns but their own,—eschewing all gossipings and morning gaddings,—and carrying short tongues and long petticoats. That the men should abstain from intermeddling in public concerns, intrusting the cares of government to the officers appointed to support them, staying at home, like good citizens, making money for themselves, and getting children for the benefit of their country. That the burgomasters should look well to the public interest,—not oppressing the poor nor indulging the rich,—not tasking their ingenuity to devise new laws, but faithfully enforcing those which were already made, rather bending their attention to prevent evil than to punish it; ever recollecting that civil magistrates should consider themselves more as guardians of public morals than rat-catchers employed to entrap public delinquents. Finally, he exhorted them, one and all, high and low, rich and poor, to conduct themselves as well as they could, assuring them that if they faithfully and conscientiously complied with this golden rule, there was no danger but that they would all conduct themselves well enough. This done, he gave them a paternal benediction, the sturdy Antony sounded a most loving farewell with his trumpet, the jolly crews put up a shout of triumph, and the invincible armada swept off proudly down the bay."
The account of an expedition against Fort Christina deserves to be quoted in full, for it is an example of what war might be, full of excitement, and exercise, and heroism, without danger to life. We take up the narrative at the moment when the Dutch host,
"Brimful of wrath and cabbage,"
and excited by the eloquence of the mighty Peter, lighted their pipes, and charged upon the fort:
"The Swedish garrison, ordered by the cunning Risingh not to fire until they could distinguish the whites of their assailants' eyes, stood in horrid silence on the covert-way, until the eager Dutchmen had ascended the glacis. Then did they pour into them such a tremendous volley, that the very hills quaked around, and were terrified even unto an incontinence of water, insomuch that certain springs burst forth from their sides, which continue to run unto the present day. Not a Dutchman but would have bitten the dust beneath that dreadful fire, had not the protecting Minerva kindly taken care that the Swedes should, one and all, observe their usual custom of shutting their eyes and turning away their heads at the moment of discharge.
"The Swedes followed up their fire by leaping the counterscarp, and falling tooth and nail upon the foe with curious outcries. And now might be seen prodigies of valor, unmatched in history or song. Here was the sturdy Stoffel Brinkerhoff brandishing his quarter-staff, like the giant Blanderon his oak-tree (for he scorned to carry any other weapon), and drumming a horrific tune upon the hard heads of the Swedish soldiery. There were the Van Kortlandts, posted at a distance, like the Locrian archers of yore, and plying it most potently with the long-bow, for which they were so justly renowned. On a rising knoll were gathered the valiant men of Sing-Sing, assisting marvelously in the fight by chanting the great song of St. Nicholas; but as to the Gardeniers of Hudson, they were absent on a marauding party, laying waste the neighboring water-melon patches.