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Title: Along the Hudson with Washington Irving
Author: Wallace Bruce
Contributor: Washington Irving
Release date: September 25, 2026 [eBook #79653]
Language: English
Original publication: Poughkeepsie: A. V. Haight Company, 1913
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79653
Credits: Charlene Taylor, chenzw, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALONG THE HUDSON WITH WASHINGTON IRVING ***
ALONG
THE HUDSON
WITH
WASHINGTON
IRVING
By WALLACE BRUCE
PRESS OF THE A. V. HAIGHT COMPANY
POUGHKEEPSIE, N. Y.
Copyright 1913
by WALLACE BRUCE
A World-wide Welcome
_Hail stately ship of worthy name!
Where cherished memories fondly brood,
Proclaiming wide our Hudson’s fame;
Ay more; a world-wide Brotherhood.
With hearty cheer we welcome thee,
Washington Irving’s flag unfurled,
Whose genius rules from sea to sea
Whose love enriches all the world._
_Ring happy bells! Manhattan greet
Our “Irving” at thy portal now;
No other name so fair and meet,
Your storied record to endow.
Ring joyous bells along the way!
Swing wide and far a welcome free!
The glorious Hudson wakes today
With grateful music all for thee._
_Hail! “Irving” Hail! no name but thine
Could blend and bind such memories true;
Through him long centuries entwine
The Highlands bold and Catskills blue.
From Sunnyside to mountain stream
Where “Laughing Water” gently plays
Let bells salute Van Winkle’s dream
And crown the land with laurel bays._
CONTENTS
Along the Hudson 5
Irving’s First Voyage by Sloop in 1800 9
His Account of Hendrick Hudson’s Discovery 13
Peter Stuyvesant’s Journey 29
Patroon Van Rensellear’s Trip from New
York to Albany 37
Oloffe Van Kortland’s Dream 42
Legend of Sleepy Hollow 44
Rip Van Winkle 78
Sunnyside--The Home of Many Memories 109
The Dreamland of Pocantico and Sleepy
Hollow 114
Washington Irving at Home and Abroad 117
Along the Hudson With Washington Irving
Through a Realm of Beauty, Romance
and History with our sweetest
writer and noblest voyager
For many years it has been the delight of our Hudson River dwellers
and of all world-wide readers in every state and in many lands, to
make delightful excursions of fancy “Along the Hudson with Washington
Irving.” It was, therefore, a beautiful thought of the Hudson River Day
Line to convert this fancy into fact and to make our journeys “Along
the Hudson with Washington Irving,” a _delightful reality_ by the
launching of a noble steamer bearing our illustrious writer’s name,
so that we all become today _real voyagers_ with _him_, and as it
were, personally conducted among the mountains, valleys and streams,
illuminated and glorified by his sunny genius and eventful life.
It was also a splendid idea of the Hudson River Day Line management to
construct and name their three superb steamers in natural and historic
sequence as related to the river, to wit:
“Hendrick Hudson”--Our Discoverer.
“Robert Fulton”--Our Inventor.
“Washington Irving”--Our Portrayer and Voyager.
From Washington Irving’s much loved Manhattan to the historic Highlands
and the romantic Catskills, the very breezes are vocal with his
utterances, and we esteem it a great privilege by the mere crossing
of a poetic “gang-plank of memory” to pass at once from Dreamland to
Reality and thereby spend a delightful day in his companionship and
listen to his cheery words which still flow sweetly from his own lips
as he recounts to us the romance and story of our noble River.
“I thank God,” exclaims Washington Irving, “that I was born on the
banks of the Hudson, for I fancy I can trace much that is good and
pleasant in my heterogeneous compound to my early companionship with
this glorious river.”
It will be remembered that a short walk from his Birthplace, 119
William St., would take the active lad in three or four minutes
through the old Trinity churchyard or across open fields from his
very doorstep to the bank of the river; so that all Manhattan was in
fact his dooryard and the entire valley of the Hudson his dream land.
It may now also be fittingly recalled that Washington Irving seemed
especially foreordained by ancestry, home and association for the noble
mission that awaited him. On his eventful birthday April 5, 1783, his
patriotic mother said to his father “General Washington’s great work is
now completed and we will call our little boy Washington Irving.” The
worthy woman who had distributed food to the starving soldiers of the
American Revolution cruelly confined in the loathsome British Prison
ships of New York divined the right name for her little boy in the
cradle; this happy christening led to an early and memorable meeting
of the distinguished General and his little namesake, for Washington
Irving now tells us how.
“A young Scotch maid servant of the family, struck with the enthusiasm
which everywhere greeted General Washington’s arrival in New York,
determined to present the child to his distinguished namesake.
Accordingly she followed him one morning and leading by the hand
the lad who had scarce outgrown his virgin trousers, said “Please,
your honor, here’s a bairn was named after you.” In the estimation
of Lizzie, for so she was called, few claims of kindred could be
stronger than this. Washington did not disdain the delicate affinity,
and placing his hand on the head of her little charge, gave him his
blessing.”
The distinguished hero of Yorktown and the first President of our
Republic little dreamed that the good Scotch nurse led by the hand that
morning one destined to laurel his own history, to depict the great
deeds of the Revolutionary struggle and to transmit, as it were, by
personal touch, a work which in reverent love and sympathetic narration
would stand alone, not only in American literature, but also in the
annals of the world’s history of freedom.
Were I an artist I know of no finer group in our entire American story
than this of the great General and the bright eyed lad attended by his
nurse in her Tartan plaid standing at the doorway of the old Trinity
Church appropriately framed amid the old-time picturesque buildings
of the lower Broadway of our Revolutionary days. That greeting and
blessing was a “laying on of hands” never to be forgotten and a noble
dedication for the great work the lad was to accomplish.
Irving’s First Voyage
As the steamer lines are cast off at Desbrosses
Street pier, Washington Irving
naturally reverts to the old-time
days, and his great voyage
Along the Hudson
by sloop in 1800
My first voyage up the Hudson was made in early boyhood, before
steamboats and railroads had annihilated time and space. A voyage to
Albany then was equal to a voyage to Europe at present, and took almost
as much time. We enjoyed the beauties of the river in those days; the
features of nature were not all jumbled together, nor the towns and
villages huddled one into the other by railroad speed as they are now.
I was to make the voyage under the protection of a relative of mature
age; one experienced in the river. His first care was to look out for a
favorite sloop and captain, in which there was great choice.
The constant voyaging in the river craft by the best families of New
York and Albany made the merits of captains and sloops matters of
notoriety and discussion in both cities. The captains were mediums of
communication between separated friends and families. On the arrival of
one of them at either place he had messages to deliver and commissions
to execute which took him from house to house. Some of the ladies of
the family had, peradventure, made a voyage on board of his sloop and
experienced from him that protecting care which is always remembered
with gratitude by female passengers. In this way the captains of Albany
sloops were personages of more note in the community than captains
of European packets or steamships at the present day. A sloop was
at length chosen; but she had to complete her freight and secure a
sufficient number of passengers. Days were consumed in “drumming up” a
cargo. This was a tormenting delay to me who was about to make my first
voyage, and who, boy-like had packed up my trunk on the first mention
of the expedition. How often that trunk had to be unpacked and repacked
before we sailed.
What a time of intense delight was that first sail through the
Highlands! I sat on the deck as we slowly tided along at the foot of
those stern mountains, and gazed with wonder and admiration at cliffs
impending far above me, crowned with forests, with eagles sailing and
screaming around them; or listened to the unseen stream dashing down
precipices or beheld rock, and tree, and cloud, and sky reflected in
the glassy stream of the river. And then how solemn and thrilling the
scene as we anchored at night at the foot of these mountains, clothed
with overhanging forests; and everything grew dark and mysterious; and
I heard the plaintive note of the whippoorwill from the mountain-side,
or was startled now and then by the sudden leap and heavy splash of the
sturgeon.
But of all the scenery of the Hudson, the Kaatskill Mountains had the
most witching effect on my boyish imagination. Never shall I forget
the effect upon me of the first view of them predominating over a wide
extent of country, part wild, woody, and rugged part softened away
into all the graces of cultivation. As we slowly floated along, I lay
on the deck and watched them through a long summer’s day; undergoing a
thousand mutations under the magical effects of atmosphere sometimes
seeming to approach; at other times to recede; now almost melting
into hazy distance, now burnished by the setting sun, until, in the
evening, they printed themselves against the glowing sky in the deep
purple of an Italian landscape.
I am here recalling my first voyaging amid Hudson scenery and can say
that it has been my lot, in the course of a somewhat wandering life, to
behold some of the rivers of the old world, most renowned in history
and song, yet none have been able to efface or dim the pictures of my
native stream thus early stamped upon my memory. My heart would ever
revert to them with a filial feeling, and a recurrence of the joyous
associations of boyhood; and such recollections are, in fact, the true
fountains of youth which keep the heart from growing old.
To me the Hudson is full of storied associations, connected as it is
with some of the happiest portions of my life. Each striking feature
brings to mind some early adventure or enjoyment; some favorite
companion who shared it with me; some fair object, perchance, of
youthful admiration, who, like a star, may have beamed her allotted
time and passed away.
Washington Irving
Now proceeds to give us his account of
“Hendrick Hudson’s Discovery of Our
River.” After refreshing his memory
with a hasty glance at the
early pages of Old Knickerbocker’s
History of
New York
In the ever-memorable year of our Lord, 1609, on a Saturday morning,
the five-and-twentieth day of March, old style, did that “worthy
and irrecoverable discoverer (as he has justly been called),
Master Hudson,” set sail from Holland in a stout vessel called the
“Half-Moon,” being employed by the Dutch East India Company, to seek a
northwest passage to China.
Henry (or, as the Dutch historians call him, Hendrick) Hudson was a
seafaring man of renown, who had learned to smoke tobacco under Sir
Walter Raleigh, and is said to have been the first to introduce it into
Holland, which gained him much popularity in that country, and caused
him to find great favor in the eyes of their High Mightinesses, the
Lords States General, and also of the honorable West India Company.
He was a short, square, brawny old gentleman, with a double chin, a
mastiff mouth, and a broad copper nose, which was supposed in those
days to have acquired its fiery hue from the constant neighborhood of
his tobacco pipe.
He wore a true Andrea Ferrara, tucked in a leathern belt, and a
commodore’s cocked hat on one side of his head. He was remarkable for
always jerking up his breeches when he gave out his orders, and his
voice sounded not unlike the brattling of a tin trumpet,--owing to the
number of hard northwesters which he had swallowed in the course of his
seafaring.
Such was Hendrick Hudson, of whom we have heard so much, and know so
little; and I have been thus particular in his description for the
benefit of modern painters and statuaries, that they may represent
him as he was,--and not, according to their common custom with modern
heroes, make him look like Caesar, or Marcus Aurelius, or the Apollo of
Belvidere.
Robert Juet was an old comrade and early schoolmate of the great
Hudson, with whom he had often played truant and sailed chip boats in
a neighboring pond, when they were little boys: from whence it is said
that the commodore first derived his bias towards a seafaring life.
To this universal genius are we indebted for many particulars
concerning this voyage; of which he wrote a history, at the request
of the commodore, who had an unconquerable aversion to writing
himself, from having received so many floggings about it when at
school. To supply the deficiencies of master Juet’s journal, which is
written with true log-book brevity, I have availed myself of divers
family traditions, handed down from my great-great-grandfather, who
accompanied the expedition in the capacity of cabin-boy. From all that
I can learn, few incidents worthy of remark happened in the voyage.
Suffice it to say, the voyage was prosperous and tranquil; the crew,
being a patient people, much given to slumber and vacuity, and but
little troubled with the disease of thinking,--a malady of the mind,
which is the sure breeder of discontent, every man was allowed to
sleep quietly at his post unless the wind blew. True, it is, some
slight disaffection was shown on two or three occasions, at certain
unreasonable conduct of Commodore Hudson. Thus, for instance, he
forbore to shorten sail when the wind was light, and the weather
serene, which was considered among the most experienced Dutch seamen as
certain weather-breeders, or prognostics that the weather would change
for the worse. He likewise prohibited the seamen from wearing more than
five jackets and six pair of breeches, under pretense of rendering
them more alert; and no man was permitted to go aloft and hand in
sails with a pipe in his mouth, as is the invariable Dutch custom at
the present day. All these grievances, though they might ruffle for a
moment the constitutional tranquillity of the honest Dutch tars, made
but transient impression;--they ate hugely and slept immeasurably; and
being under the especial guidance of Providence, the ship was safely
conducted to the coast of America; where, after sundry unimportant
touchings and standings off and on, she at length, on the fourth day
of September, entered that majestic bay which at this day expands its
ample bosom before the city of New York, and which had never before
been visited by any European.
True it is--and I am not ignorant of the fact--that in a certain
apocryphal book of voyages, compiled by one Hakluyt, is to be found
a letter written to Francis the First, by one Giovanna, or John
Verazzani, on which some writers are inclined to found a belief that
this delightful bay had been visited nearly a century previous to the
voyage of the enterprising Hudson. Now this (albeit it has met with the
countenance of certain very judicious and learned men) I hold in utter
disbelief, and that for various good and substantial reasons: First,
Because on strict examination it will be found that the description
given by this Verazzani applies about as well to the bay of New York as
it does to my night-cap. Secondly, because that this John Verazzani,
for whom I already begin to feel a most bitter enmity, is a native
of Florence; and everybody knows the crafty wiles of these losel
Florentines, by which they filched away the laurels from the brows
of the immortal Colon (vulgarly called Columbus), and bestowed them
on their officious townsman, Amerigo Vespucci; and I make no doubt
they are equally ready to rob the illustrious Hudson of the credit of
discovering this beautiful island, adorned by the city of New York,
and placing it beside their usurped discovery of South America. And
thirdly, I award my decision in favor of the pretensions of Hendrick
Hudson, inasmuch as his expedition sailed from Holland, being truly
and absolutely a Dutch enterprise;--and though all the proofs in the
world were introduced on the other side, I would set them at naught,
as undeserving my attention. If these three reasons be not sufficient
to satisfy every burgher of this ancient city, all I can say is, they
are degenerate descendants from their venerable Dutch ancestors, and
totally unworthy the trouble of convincing. Thus, therefore, the title
of Hendrick Hudson to his renowned discovery is fully vindicated.
It has been traditionary in our family, that when the great navigator
was first blessed with a view of this enchanting island, he was
observed, for the first and only time in his life, to exhibit strong
symptoms of astonishment and admiration. He is said to have turned
to Master Juet, and uttered these remarkable words, while he pointed
towards this paradise of the new world,--“See! there!”--and, thereupon,
as was always his way when he was uncommonly pleased, he did puff out
such clouds of dense tobacco smoke, that in one minute the vessel was
out of sight of land, and master Juet was fain to wait until the winds
dispersed this impenetrable fog.
It was indeed,--as my great-grandfather used to say,--though in
truth I never heard him, for he died, as might be expected before I
was born--“It was indeed a spot on which the eye might have revelled
forever, in ever new and never-ending beauties.” The island of
Mannahata spread wide before them, like some sweet vision of fancy, or
some fair creation of industrious magic. Its hills of smiling green
swelled gently one above another, crowned with lofty trees of luxuriant
growth; some pointing their tapering foliage towards the clouds, which
were gloriously transparent; and others loaded with verdant burden of
clambering vines, bowing their branches to the earth, that was covered
with flowers. On the gentle declivities of the hills were scattered
in gay profusion, the dogwood, the sumach, and the wild brier, whose
scarlet berries and white blossoms glowed brightly among the deep
green of the surrounding foliage; and here and there a curling column
of smoke, rising from the little glens that opened along the shore,
seemed to promise the weary voyagers a welcome at the hands of their
fellow-creatures. As they stood gazing with entranced attention on the
scene before them, a red man, crowned with feathers, issued from one
of these glens, and after contemplating in wonder the gallant ship, as
she sat like a stately swan swimming on a silver lake, sounded the
war-whoop, and bounded into the woods like a wild deer, to the utter
astonishment of the phlegmatic Dutchmen, who had never heard such a
noise, or witnessed such a caper in their whole lives.
Of the transactions of our adventurers with the savages, and how the
latter smoked copper pipes and ate dried currants; how they brought
great store of tobacco and oysters; how they shot one of the ship’s
crew, and how he was buried, I shall say nothing; being that I consider
them unimportant to my history. After tarrying a few days in the bay,
in order to refresh themselves after their seafaring, our voyagers
weighed anchor, to explore a mighty river which emptied into the bay.
This river, it is said, was known among the savages by the name of
the Shatemuch, though we are assured in an excellent little history
published in 1674, by John Josselyn, Gent, that it was called the
Mohegan, and master Richard Bloome, who wrote some time afterwards,
asserts the same,--so that I very much incline in favor of the opinion
of these two honest gentlemen. This river is likewise laid down in
Ogilby’s map as Manhattan--Noordt Montaigne and Mauritius river. Be
this as it may, up this river did the adventurous Hendrick proceed,
little doubting but it would turn out to be the much looked-for passage
to China!
The journal goes on to make mention of divers interviews between the
crew and the natives in the voyage up the river; but as they would
be impertinent to my history, I shall pass them over in silence,
except the following dry joke, played off by the old commodore and
his school-fellow, Robert Juet, which does such vast credit to their
experimental philosophy, that I cannot refrain from inserting it. “Our
master and his mate determined to try some of the chiefe men of the
country, whether they had any treacherie in them. So they tooke them
downe into the cabin, and gave them so much wine and aqua vitae, that
they were all merrie; and one of them had his wife with him which sate
so modestly, as any of our countrey women would do in a strange place.
In the end, one of them was drunke, which had been aborde of our ship
all the time that he had been there, and that was strange to them, for
they could not tell how to take it.”
He then proceeded on his voyage with great self-complacency. After
sailing, however, above an hundred miles up the river, he found the
watery world around him began to grow more shallow and confined, the
current more rapid, and perfectly fresh,--phenomena not uncommon in the
ascent of rivers, but which puzzled the honest Dutchmen prodigiously.
A consultation was therefore called, and having deliberated full six
hours, they were brought to a determination by the ship’s running
aground,--whereupon they unanimously concluded, that there was but
little chance of getting to China in this direction. A boat, however,
was despatched to explore higher up the river, which, on its return,
confirmed the opinion; upon this the ship was warped off and put about,
with great difficulty, being, like most of her sex, exceedingly hard
to govern; and the adventurous Hudson, according to the account of my
great-great-grandfather, returned down the river--with a prodigious
flea in his ear?
Being satisfied that there was little likelihood of getting to China,
unless, like the blind man, he returned from whence he set out, and
took a fresh start, he forthwith recrossed the sea to Holland, where he
was received with great welcome by the honorable East India Company,
who were very much rejoiced to see him come back safe--with their
ship; and at a large and respectable meeting of the first merchants
and burgomasters of Amsterdam, it was unanimously determined that as
a munificent reward for the eminent services he had performed, and
the important discovery he had made, the great river Mohegan shall be
called after his name--and it continues to be called Hudson river unto
this very day.
Letters-patent were granted by government to an association of
merchants, called the West India Company, for the exclusive trade
on Hudson river, on which they erected a trading-house, called Fort
Aurania, or Orange, from whence did spring the great city of Albany.
It was some three or four years after the return of the immortal
Hendrick, that a crew of honest, Low-Dutch colonists set sail from the
city of Amsterdam for the shores of America. The “Goede Vrouw” made out
to accomplish her voyage in a very few months, and came to anchor at
the mouth of the Hudson a little to the east of Gibbet Island.
Here, lifting up their eyes, they beheld, on what is at present
called the Jersey shore, a small Indian village, pleasantly embowered
in a grove of spreading elms, and the natives all collected on the
beach, gazing in stupid admiration at the “Goede Vrouw.” A boat
was immediately dispatched to enter into a treaty with them, and
approaching the shore, hailed them through a trumpet, in the most
friendly terms; but so horribly confounded were these poor savages at
the tremendous and uncouth sound of the Low-Dutch language, that they
one and all took to their heels, and scampered over the Bergen hills;
nor did they stop until they had buried themselves, head and ears,
in the marshes on the other side, where they all miserably perished
to a man;--and their bones, being collected and decently covered by
the Tammany Society of that day, formed that singular mound called
Rattlesnake Hill, which rises out of the center of the salt marshes a
little to the east of the Newark Causeway.
Animated by this unlooked-for victory, our valiant heroes sprang ashore
in triumph, took possession of the soil as conquerors, in the name
of their High Mightinesses the Lords States General; and, marching
fearlessly forward, carried the village of Communipaw by storm,
notwithstanding that it was vigorously defended by some half score of
old squaws and papooses. On looking about them they were so transported
with the excellencies of the place, that they had very little doubt the
blessed St. Nicholas had guided them thither, as the very spot whereon
to settle their colony. The softness of the soil was wonderfully
adapted to the driving of piles; the swamps and marshes around them
afforded ample opportunities for the constructing of dykes and dams;
the shallowness of the shore was peculiarly favorable to the building
of docks;--in a word, this spot abounded with all the requisites for
the foundation of a great Dutch city. On making a faithful report,
therefore, to the crew of the “Goede Vrouw,” they one and all
determined that this was the destined end of their voyage. Accordingly
they descended from the “Goede Vrouw,” men, women, and children, in
goodly groups, as did the animals of yore from the ark, and formed
themselves into a thriving settlement, which they called by the Indian
name Communipaw.
As all the world is doubtless acquainted with Communipaw, it may seem
somewhat superfluous to treat of it in the present work; but my readers
will please to recollect, notwithstanding it is my chief desire to
satisfy the present age, yet I write likewise for posterity, and have
to consult the understanding and curiosity of some half a score of
centuries yet to come, by which time, perhaps, were it not for this
invaluable history, the great Communipaw, like Babylon, Carthage,
Ninevah and other great cities, might be perfectly extinct,--sunk
and forgotten in its own mud,--its inhabitants turned into oysters,
and even its situation a fertile subject of learned controversy and
hard-headed investigation among indefatigable historians. Let me then
piously rescue from oblivion the humble relics of a place, which was
the egg from whence was hatched the mighty city of New York!
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, 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.
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 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 hand saw.
The crew of the “Goede Vrouw” being soon reinforced by fresh
importations from Holland, the settlement went jollily on, increasing
in magnitude and prosperity. 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, myhn-her,--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.
As to the honest burghers of Communipaw, likewise 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 a 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.
Peter Stuyvesant’s Journey as narrated by Irving
Here and there might be seen a rude wigwam perched among the cliffs
of the mountains, with its curling column of smoke mounting in the
transparent atmosphere,--but so loftily situated that the whoopings of
the savage children, gambolling on the margin of the dizzy heights,
fell almost as faintly on the ear as the notes of the lark when lost
in the azure vault of heaven. Now and then, from the beetling brown of
some precipice, the wild deer would look timidly down upon the splendid
pageant as it passed below, and then, tossing his antlers in the air,
would bound away into the thickest of the forest.
Through such scenes did the stately vessel of Peter Stuyvesant pass.
Now did they skirt the bases of the rocky heights of Jersey, which
spring up like everlasting walls, reaching from the waves unto the
heavens, and were fashioned, if tradition may be believed, in times
along past, by the mighty spirit Manetho, to protect his favorite
abodes from the unhallowed eyes of mortals. Now did they career it
gayly across the vast expanse of Tappen Bay, whose wide-extended shores
present a variety of delectable scenery,--here the bold promontory,
crowned with embowering trees, advancing into the bay,--there the long
woodland slope, sweeping up from the shore in rich luxuriance, and
terminating in the upland precipice,--while at a distance a long waving
line of rocky heights threw their gigantic shades across the water.
Now would they pass where some modest little interval, opening among
these stupendous scenes, yet retreating as it were for protection into
the embraces of the neighboring mountains, displayed a rural paradise,
fraught with sweet and pastoral beauties,--the velvet-tufted lawn, the
bushy copse, the tinkling rivulet, stealing through the fresh and vivid
verdure, on whose banks was situated some little Indian village, or,
peradventure, the rude cabin of some solitary hunter.
The different periods of the revolving day seemed each, with cunning
magic, to diffuse a different charm over the scene. Now would the
jovial sun break gloriously from the east blazing from the summits of
the hills, and sparkling the landscape with a thousand dewy gems;
while along the borders of the river were seen the heavy masses of
mist, which like midnight caitiffs disturbed at his approach, made a
sluggish retreat, rolling in sullen reluctance up the mountains. At
such times all was brightness, and life, and gayety,--the atmosphere
was of an indescribable pureness and transparency,--the birds broke
forth in wanton madrigals, and the freshening breezes wafted the vessel
merrily on her course. But when the sun set amid a flood of glory in
the west, mantling the heavens and the earth with a thousand gorgeous
dyes, then all was calm, and silent, and magnificent. The late swelling
sail hung lifelessly against the mast;--the seaman, with folded arms,
leaned against the shrouds, lost in that involuntary musing which the
sober grandeur of nature commands in the rudest of her children. The
vast bosom of the Hudson was like an unruffled mirror, reflecting the
golden hue of the heavens, excepting that now and then a bark canoe
would steal across its surface, filled with painted savages, whose gay
feathers glared brightly as perchance a lingering ray of the setting
sun gleamed upon them from the western mountains.
But when the hour of twilight spread its majestic mists around, then
did the face of nature assume a thousand fugitive charms, which to the
worthy heart that seeks enjoyment in the glorious works of its Maker
are inexpressibly captivating. The mellow, dubious light that prevailed
just served to tinge with illusive colors the softened features of the
scenery. The deceived but delighted eye sought vainly to discern in the
broad masses of shade the separating line between the land and water,
or to distinguish the fading objects that seemed sinking into chaos.
Now did the busy fancy supply the feebleness of vision, producing with
industrious craft a fairy creation of her own. Under her plastic want
the barren rocks frowned upon the watery waste in the semblance of
lofty towers and high embattled castles,--trees assumed the direful
forms of mighty giants, and the inaccessible summits of the mountains
seemed peopled with a thousand shadowy beings.
Thus happily did they pursue their course, until they entered upon
those awful defiles denominated the Highlands, where it would seem
that the gigantic Titans had erst waged their impious war with heaven,
piling up cliffs on cliffs, and hurling vast masses of rock in wild
confusion. But in sooth very different is the history of these
cloud-capt mountains. These in ancient days, before the Hudson poured
its waters from the lakes, formed one vast prison, within whose rocky
bosom the omnipotent Manetho confined the rebellious spirits who
repined at his control. Here, bound in adamantine chains, or jammed in
rifted pines, or crushed by ponderous rocks, they groaned for many an
age. At length the conquering Hudson, in its career towards the ocean,
burst open their prison-house, rolling its tide triumphantly through
the stupendous ruins.
Still, however, do many of them lurk about their old abodes; and these
it is, according to venerable legends, that cause the echoes which
resound throughout these awful solitudes,--which are nothing but their
angry clamors when any noise disturbs the profoundness of their repose.
For when the elements are agitated by tempest, when the winds are up
and the thunder rolls, then horrible is the yelling and howling of
these troubled spirits, making the mountains to rebellow with their
hideous uproar; for at such times it is said that they think the great
Manetho is returning once more to plunge them in gloomy caverns, and
renew their intolerable captivity.
But all these fair and glorious scenes were lost upon the gallant
Stuyvesant; naught occupied his mind but thoughts of iron war, and
proud anticipations of hardy deeds of arms. Neither did his honest
crew trouble their heads with any romantic speculations of the kind.
The pilot at the helm quietly smoked his pipe, thinking of nothing
either past, present or to come;--those of his comrades who were not
industriously smoking under the hatches were listening with open mouths
to Antony Van Corlear.
And now I am going to tell a fact, which I doubt much my readers will
hesitate to believe; but if they do, they are welcome not to believe a
word in this whole history, for nothing it contains is more true. It
must be known then that the nose of Antony the trumpeter was of a very
lusty size, strutting boldly from his countenance like a mountain of
Golconda; being sumptuously bedecked with rubies and other precious
stones,--the true regalia of a king of good fellows, which jolly
Bacchus grants to all who bouse it heartily at the flagon. Now, thus
it happened, that bright and early in the morning, the good Antony,
having washed his burly visage, was leaning over the quarter-railing
of the galley, contemplating it in the glassy wave below. Just at this
moment the illustrious sun, breaking in all its splendor from behind
a high bluff of the highlands, did dart one of his most potent beams
full upon the refulgent nose of the sounder of brass--the reflection of
which shot straightway down, hissing-hot, into the water, and killed a
mighty sturgeon that was sporting beside the vessel! This huge monster,
being with infinite labor hoisted on board, furnished a luxurious
repast to all the crew, being accounted of excellent flavor, excepting
about the wound, where it smacked a little of brimstone; and this, on
my veracity, was the first time that ever sturgeon was eaten in these
parts by Christian people.
When this astonishing miracle came to be make known to Peter
Stuyvesant, and that he tasted of the unknown fish, he, as may well be
supposed, marvelled exceedingly; and as a monument thereof, he gave the
name Antony’s Nose to a stout promontory in the neighborhood; and it
has continued to be called Antony’s Nose ever since that time.
The good people of New Amsterdam crowded down to the Battery,--that
blest resort, from whence so many a tender prayer has been wafted, so
many a fair hand waved, so many a tearful look been cast by lovesick
damsel, after the lessening bark, bearing her adventurous swain to
distant climes!--Here the populace watched with straining eyes the
gallant squadron, as it slowly floated down the bay, and when the
intervening land at the Narrows shut it from their sight, gradually
dispersed with silent tongues and downcast countenances.
The Journey of Van Rensellaer the Patroon from New York to Albany as
narrated by Irving
One day when Wouter Van Twiller and his counsellors were smoking and
pondering ... over the affairs of the province they were roused by
the sound of a cannon. Sallying forth they beheld a strange vessel
at anchor in the bay. After a while, a boat put off for land, and a
stranger stepped on shore,--a lofty, lordly kind of man, tall and dry,
with a meagre face, furnished with huge moustache. He was clad in
Flemish doublet and hose, and an insufferably tall hat, with a cocktail
feather. Such was the patroon Killian Van Rensellaer who had come out
from Holland to found a colony or patroonship on a great tract of
wild land, granted to him by their High Mightinesses the Lords States
General, in the upper regions of the Hudson.
And now, from time to time, floated down tidings to the Manhattoes of
the growing importance of this new colony. Every account represented
Killian Van Rensellaer as rising in importance and becoming a mighty
patroon in the land. He had received more recruits from Holland. His
patroonship of Rensellaerwick lay immediately below Fort Aurania, and
extended for several miles on each side of the Hudson, beside embracing
the mountainous region of the Helderberg. Over all this he claimed to
hold separate jurisdiction, independent of the colonial authorities of
New Amsterdam.
At length tidings came that the patroon of Rensellaerwick had extended
his usurpations along the river, beyond the limits granted him by
their High Mightinesses; and that he had even seized upon a rocky
island in the Hudson, commonly known by the name of Bearn Island,
where he was erecting a fortress to be called by the lordly name of
“Rensellaerstein.”
Wouter Van Twiller was roused by this intelligence. After consulting
with his burgomasters, he dispatched a letter to the patroon of
Rensellaerwick, demanding by what right he had seized upon this island,
which lay beyond the bounds of his patroonship. The answer of Killian
Van Rensellaer was in his own lordly style, “By wapen recht!”--that is
to say, by the right of arms, or, in common parlance, by club-law.
This answer plunged the worthy Wouter in one of the deepest doubts he
had in the whole course of his administration; in the meantime, while
Wouter doubted, the lordly Killian went on to finish his fortress of
Rensellaerstein, about which I foresee I shall have something to record
in a future chapter of this most eventful history.
In the fulness of time the yacht arrived before Bearn Island, and
Antony the Trumpeter, mounting the poop, sounded a parley to the
fortress. In a little while the steeple crowned hat of Nicholas Koorn,
the wacht-meester, rose above the battlements, followed by his iron
visage, and ultimately his whole person, armed, as before to the very
teeth; while one by one, a whole row of Helderbergers reared their
round burly heads above the wall, and beside each pumpkin-head peered
the end of a rusty musket. Nothing daunted by this formidable array
Antony Van Corlear drew forth and read his missive from William the
Testy ordering the garrison to quit the premises bag and baggage on
pain of vengeance of the potentate of the Manhattoes. In reply the
wacht-meester applied the thumb of his right hand to the end of his
nose and the thumb of his left hand to the little finger of his right,
and spreading each hand like a fan, made an aerial flourish with his
fingers. Anthony Van Corlear was sorely perplexed to understand this
sign which seemed to him something mysterious and masonic. Not liking
to betray his ignorance he again read with a loud voice the missive
of William the Testy, and again Nicholas Koorn applied the thumb of
his right hand to the end of his nose, and repeated this kind of nasal
weathercock. Anthony Van Corlear now persuaded himself that this was
some shorthand sign or symbol, current in diplomacy, which, though
unintelligible to a new diplomat, like himself, would spell volumes to
the experienced intellect of William the Testy; considering his embassy
therefore at an end he sounded his trumpet with great complacency, and
set sail on his return down the river, every now and then practicing
the mysterious sign of the wacht-meester to keep it accurately in mind.
Arrived at New Amsterdam he made a faithful report of his embassy to
the Governor, accompanied by a manual exhibition of the response of
Nicholas Koorn. The Governor was equally perplexed with his embassy.
He was deeply versed in the mysteries of Free Masonry, but they
threw no light on the matter. He knew every variety of windmill and
weathercock but was not a whit the wiser as to the aerial sign in
question. He called a meeting of his Council. Antony Van Corlear stood
forth in the midst and putting the thumb of his right hand to his nose
and the thumb of his left hand to the finger of the right, he gave a
faithful facsimile of the portentous sign. Having a nose of unusual
dimensions, it was as if the reply was placed in capitals, but all in
vain, the worthy burgomasters were equally perplexed with the Governor.
Each one put his thumb to the end of his nose, spread his fingers
like a fan, imitated the motion of Antony Van Corlear and smoked in
dubious silence. Several times was Antony obliged to stand forth like
a fugleman, and repeat the sign, and each time a circle of nasal
weathercocks might be seen in the Council Chamber.
The Council broke up in sore perplexity. The matter got abroad and
Antony Van Corlear was stopped at every corner to repeat the signal to
a knot of anxious newsmongers, each of whom departed with his thumb to
his nose and his fingers in the air, to carry the story home to his
family.
And it is still said that to the present day the thumb to the nose and
the fingers in the air is apt to be the reply of the Helderbergers
whenever called upon for any long arrears of rent.
Oloffe Van Kortlandt’s Dream at the Battery of Manhattan
His wonderful prophecy of the founding of
New York City and its marvelous
fulfilment
Washington Irving now recalls and recites to us at our request the
“Dream of Oloffe Van Kortlandt” and its early fulfilment which he
also at times refers to, when speaking of New York, as “A lively and
wonderful chicken hatched from the egg of old Communipaw” so he now
relates to us how (some two hundred years ago) the sage Oloffe voyaged
from Communipaw Bay to the Battery where he had a most remarkable dream
now completely fulfilled that the good St. Nicholas came riding over
the tops of the trees, and descended upon the island of Manhattan and
sat himself down and smoked, “and the smoke ascended in the sky, and
formed a cloud overhead; and Oloffe bethought him, and he hastened and
climbed up to the top of one of the tallest trees, and saw that the
smoke spread over a great extent of country; and, as he considered it
more attentively, he fancied that the great volume assumed a variety of
marvelous forms, where, in dim obscurity, he saw shadowed out palaces
and domes and lofty spires, all of which lasted but a moment, and then
passed away.” So New York, like Alba Longa and Rome, and other cities
of antiquity, was under the immediate care of its tutelar saint. Its
destiny was foreshadowed, for now the palaces and domes and lofty
spires are real and genuine, and something more than dreams are made of.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern
shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated
by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always
prudently shortened sail, and implored the protection of St. Nicholas
when they crossed, there lies a small market-town or rural port, which
by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly
known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in
former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the
inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village
tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact,
but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic.
Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little
valley, or rather lap of land, among high hills, which is one of the
quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it,
with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional
whistle of a quail, or tapping of a woodpecker, is almost the only
sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.
I recollect that, when a stripling, my first exploit in
squirrel-shooting was in a grove of tall walnut-trees that shades one
side of the valley. I had wandered into it at noon time, when all
nature is peculiarly quiet, and was startled by the roar of my own
gun, as it broke the Sabbath stillness around, and was prolonged and
reverberated by the angry echoes. If ever I should wish for a retreat,
whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream
quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more
promising than this little valley.
From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of
its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers,
this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow,
and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all
the neighboring country. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over
the land and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place
was bewitched by a high German doctor, during the early days of the
settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of
his tribe, held his pow-wows there before the country was discovered by
Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under
the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of
the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are
given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs; are subject to trances and
visions; and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices
in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted
spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare
oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and
the nightmare, with her whole nine fold, seems to make it the favorite
scene of her gambols.
The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and
seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the
apparition of a figure on horseback without a head. It is said by some
to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away
by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary
war; and who is ever and anon seen by the country folk, hurrying along
the gloom of night, as if on wings of the wind. His haunts are not
confined to the valley, but extend at times to the adjacent roads, and
especially to the vicinity of a church at no great distance. Indeed,
certain of the most authentic historians of those parts, who have been
careful in collecting and collating the floating facts concerning this
spectre, allege that the body of the trooper, having been buried in the
church-yard, the ghost rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly
quest of his head; and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes
passes along the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to his being
belated, and in a hurry to get back to the churchyard before daybreak.
Such is the general purport of this legendary superstition, which has
furnished material for many a wild story in that region of shadows; and
the specter is known, at all the country firesides, by the name of the
Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.
It is remarkable that the visionary propensity I have mentioned is not
confined to the native inhabitants of the valley, but is unconsciously
imbibed by every one who resides there for a time. However wide-awake
they may have been before they entered that sleepy region, they are
sure, in a little time, to inhale the witching influence of the air,
and begin to grow imaginative--to dream dreams, and see apparitions.
I mention this peaceful spot with all possible laud; for it is in such
little retired Dutch valleys, found here and there embosomed in the
great State of New York, that population, manners and customs, remain
fixed; while the great torrent of migration and improvement which is
making such incessant changes in other parts of this restless country,
sweeps by them unobserved. They are like those little nooks of still
water which border a rapid stream; where we may see the straw and
bubble riding quietly at anchor, or slowly revolving in their mimic
harbor, undisturbed by the rush of the passing current. Though many
years have elapsed since I trod the drowsy shades of Sleepy Hollow, yet
I question whether I should not still find the same trees and the same
families vegetating in its sheltered bosom.
In this by-place of nature, there abode, in a remote period of American
history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy wight
of the name of Ichabod Crane; who sojourned, or, as he expressed
it, “tarried,” in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the
children of the vicinity.
That all this might not be too onerous on the purses of his rustic
patrons, who are apt to consider the cost of schooling a grievous
burden, and schoolmasters as mere drones, he had various ways of
rendering himself both useful and agreeable. He assisted the farmers
occasionally in the lighter labors of their farms; helped to make
hay, mended the fences; took the horses to water; drove the cows
from pasture; and cut wood for the winter fire. He laid aside, too,
all the dominant dignity and absolute sway with which he lorded it
in his little empire, the school, and became wonderfully gentle and
ingratiating. He found favor in the eyes of the mothers, by petting
the children, particularly the youngest; and like the lion bold, which
whilom so magnanimously the lamb did hold, he would sit with a child on
one knee, and rock a cradle with his foot for whole hours together.
In addition to his other vocations, he was the singing-master of the
neighborhood, and picked up many bright shillings by instructing the
young folks in psalmody. It was a matter of no little vanity to him,
on Sunday to take his station in front of the church gallery, with a
band of chosen singers where, in his own mind, he completely carried
away the psalm from the parson. Certain it is, his voice resounded
far above all the rest of the congregation; and there are peculiar
quavers still to be heard in that church, and which may even be heard
half a mile off, quite to the opposite side of the mill-pond, on a
still Sunday morning, which are said to be legitimately descended from
the nose of Ichabod Crane. Thus, by divers little makeshifts in that
ingenious way which is commonly denominated “by hook and by crook” the
worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought by all who
understood nothing of the labor of head work to have a wonderfully easy
life of it.
The school master is generally a man of some importance in the female
circle of a rural neighborhood; being considered a kind of idle
gentlemanlike personage, of vastly superior taste and accomplishments
to the rough country swains, and, indeed, inferior in learning only
to the parson. His appearance, therefore, is apt to occasion some
little stir at the tea-table of a farmhouse, and the addition of a
supernumerary dish of cakes or sweetmeats, or, peradventure, the parade
of a silver tea-pot. Our man of letters, therefore, was peculiarly
happy in the smiles of all country damsels. How he would figure among
them in the churchyard, between services on Sundays! gathering grapes
for them from the wild vines that overrun the surrounding trees;
reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the tombstones; or
sauntering, with a whole bevy of them, along the banks of the adjacent
mill-pond; while the more bashful country pumpkins hung sheepishly
back, envying his superior elegance and address.
From his half itinerant life, also, he was a kind of traveling gazette,
carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to house; so
that his appearance was always greeted with satisfaction. He was,
moreover, esteemed by the women as a man of great erudition, for he had
read several books quite through, and was a perfect master of Cotton
Mather’s history of New England Witchcraft, in which, by the way, he
most firmly and potently believed.
He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple
credulity. His appetite for the marvelous, and his powers of digesting
it, were equally extraordinary; and both had been increased by his
residence in this spellbound region. No tale was too gross or monstrous
for his capacious swallow. It was often his delight, after his school
was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of
clover, bordering the little brook that whimpered by his school-house,
and there con over old Mather’s direful tales, until the gathering dusk
of the evening made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then,
as he wended his way, by swamp and stream and awful woodland, to the
farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature,
at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination: the moan of
the whippoorwill from the hillside; the boding cry of the tree-toad,
that harbinger of storm; the dreary hooting of the screech owl, or the
sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost.
Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was, to pass long winter
evenings with the old Dutch wives, as they sat spinning by the fire,
with a row of apples roasting and sputtering along the hearth, and
listen to their marvelous tales of ghosts and goblins, and haunted
fields, and haunted brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses,
and particularly of the headless horseman, or galloping Hessian of the
Hollow, as they sometimes called him. He would delight them equally by
his anecdotes of witchcraft, and of the direful moans and portentous
sights and sound in the air, which prevailed in the earlier times of
Connecticut; and would frighten them woefully with speculations upon
comets and shooting stars; and with the alarming fact that the world
did absolutely turn round, and that they were half the time topsy-turvy!
What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path amidst the dim and
ghastly glare of a snowy night!--With what wistful look did he eye
every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from
some distant window!--How often was he appalled by some shrub covered
with snow, which, like a sheeted spectre, beset his very path!--How
often did he shrink with curdling awe at the sound of his own steps on
the frosty crust beneath his feet; and dread to look over his shoulder,
lest he should behold some uncouth being tramping close behind
him!--and how often was he thrown into complete dismay by some rushing
blast, howling among the trees, in the idea that it was the Galloping
Hessian on one of his nightly scourings!
All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the
mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his
time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his
lonely perambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and
he would have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the devil and
all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes
more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race
of witches put together, and that was--a woman.
Among the musical disciples who assembled, one evening in each week,
to receive his instructions in psalmody, was Katrina Van Tassel the
daughter and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer. She was a
blooming lass of fresh eighteen; plump as a partridge; ripe and melting
and rosy cheeked as one of her father’s peaches, and universally famed,
not merely for her beauty, but her vast expectations. She was withal a
little of a coquette, as might be perceived even in her dress, which
was a mixture of ancient and modern fashions, as most suited to set
off her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold, which her
great-great-grandmother had brought over from Saardam; the tempting
stomacher of the olden time; and withal a provoking short petticoat, to
display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round.
Ichabod Crane had a soft and foolish heart towards the sex; and it is
not to be wondered at, that so tempting a morsel soon found favor in
his eyes; more especially after he had visited her in her paternal
mansion. Old Baltus Van Tassel was a perfect picture of a thriving,
contented, liberal-hearted farmer. He seldom, it is true, sent either
his eyes or his thoughts beyond the boundaries of his own farm; but
within those everything was snug, happy, and well-conditioned. He was
satisfied with his wealth, but not proud of it; and piqued himself
upon the hearty abundance, rather than the style in which he lived. His
stronghold was situated on the banks of the Hudson, in one of those
green, sheltered, fertile nooks, in which the Dutch farmers are so
fond of nestling. A great elm tree spread its broad branches over it;
at the foot of which bubbled up a spring of the softest and sweetest
water, in a little well, formed of a barrel; and then stole sparkling
away through the grass, to a neighboring brook, that bubbled along
among alders and dwarf willows. Hard by the farmhouse was a vast barn,
that might have served for a church; every window and crevice of which
seemed bursting forth with the treasures of the farm; the flail was
busily resounding within it from morning to night; swallows and martins
skimmed twittering about the eaves; and rows of pigeons, some with
one eye turned up, as if watching the weather, some with their heads
under their wings, or buried in their bosoms, and others swelling,
and cooing, and bowing about their dames, were enjoying the sunshine
on the roof. Sleek unwieldy porkers were grunting in the repose and
abundance of their pens; whence sallied forth, now and then, troops of
sucking pigs, as if to snuff the air. A stately squadron of snowy geese
were riding in an adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets of ducks;
regiments of turkeys were gobbling through the farmyard, and guinea
fowls fretting about it, like ill-tempered housewives, with their
peevish discontented cry. Before the barn door strutted the gallant
cock, that pattern of a husband, a warrior, and a fine gentleman,
clapping his burnished wings, and crowing in the pride and gladness
of his heart--sometimes tearing up the earth with his feet, and then,
generously calling his ever-hungry family of wives and children to
enjoy the rich morsel which he had discovered.
When he entered the house the conquest of his heart was complete.
It was one of those spacious farmhouses, with high-ridged, but
lowly-sloping roofs, built in the style handed down from the first
Dutch settlers; the low projecting eaves forming a piazza along the
front, capable of being closed up in bad weather. Under this were hung
flails, harness, various utensils of husbandry, and nets for fishing in
the neighboring river. Benches were built along the sides for summer
use; and a great spinning-wheel at one end, and a churn at the other,
showed the various uses to which this important porch might be devoted.
From this piazza the wondering Ichabod entered the hall, which formed
the center of the mansion and the place of usual residence. Here, rows
of resplendent pewter, ranged on a long dresser, dazzled his eyes. In
one corner stood a huge bag of wool ready to be spun; in another a
quantity of linsey-woolsey just from the loom; ears of Indian corn,
and strings of dried apples and peaches, hung in gay festoon along
the walls, mingled with the gaud of red peppers; and a door left ajar
gave him a peep into the best parlor, where the claw-footed chairs,
and dark mahogany tables, shone like mirrors; and irons, with their
accompanying shovel and tongs, glistened from their covert of asparagus
tops; mock-oranges and conch-shells decorated the mantel-piece; strings
of various colored birds’ eggs were suspended above it: a great ostrich
egg was hung from the centre of the room, and a corner cupboard,
knowingly left open, displayed immense treasures of old silver and
well-mended china.
From the moment Ichabod laid his eyes upon these regions of delight,
the peace of his mind was at an end, and his only study was how to
gain the affections of the peerless daughter of Van Tassel. In this
enterprise, however, he had more real difficulties than generally fell
to the lot of a knight-errant of yore, who seldom had anything but
giants, enchanters, fiery dragons, and such like easily-conquered
adversaries, to contend with; and had to make his way merely through
gates of iron and brass, and walls of adamant to the castle keep, where
the lady of his heart was confined; all which he achieved as easily
as a man would carve his way to the centre of a Christmas pie; and
then the lady gave him her hand as a matter of course. Ichabod, on the
contrary, had to win his way to the heart of a country coquette, beset
with a labyrinth of whims and caprices, which were forever presenting
new difficulties and impediments; and he had to encounter a host of
fearful adversaries of real flesh and blood, the numerous rustic
admirers, who beset every portal to her heart keeping a watchful and
angry eye upon each other, but ready to fly out in the common cause
against any new competitor.
Among these the most formidable was a burly, roaring, roystering blade,
of the name of Abraham, or, according to the Dutch abbreviation,
Brom Van Brunt, the hero of the country round, which rang with
his feats of strength and hardihood. He was broad-shouldered and
double-jointed, with short curling black hair, and a bluff, but not
unpleasant countenance, having a mingled air of fun and arrogance.
From his Herculean frame and great powers of limb, he had received
the nickname of Brom Bones, by which he was universally known. He was
famed for great knowledge and skill in horsemanship being as dexterous
on horseback as a Tartar. He was foremost at all races and cock-fights;
and, with the ascendency which bodily strength acquires in rustic
life, was the umpire in all disputes, setting his hat on one side,
and giving his decisions with an air and tone admitting of no gainsay
or appeal. He was always ready for either a fight or a frolic; but
had more mischief than ill-will in his composition; and, with all his
overbearing roughness, there was a strong dash of waggish good humor at
bottom. He had three or four boon companions, who regarded him as their
model, and at the head of whom he scoured the country, attending every
scene of feud or merriment for miles round. In cold weather he was
distinguished by a fur cap, surmounted with a flaunting fox’s tail; and
when the folks at a country gathering descried this well-known crest at
a distance, whisking about among a squad of hard riders, they always
stood by for a squall. Sometimes his crew would be heard dashing along
past the farmhouses at midnight, with whoop and halloo, like a troop
of Don Cossacks; and the old dames, startled out of their sleep, would
listen for a moment till the hurry-scurry had clattered by, and then
exclaim, “Ay, there goes Brom Bones and his gang!” The neighbors looked
upon him with a mixture of awe, admiration, and good will; and when any
madcap prank, or rustic brawl, occurred in the vicinity, always shook
their heads and warranted Brom Bones was at the bottom of it.
This rantipole hero had for some time singled out the blooming Katrina
for the object of his uncouth gallantries, and though his amorous
toyings were something like the gentle caresses and endearments of a
bear, yet it was whispered that she did not altogether discourage his
hopes. Certain it is, his advances were signals for rival candidates
to retire, who felt no inclination to cross a lion in his amours;
insomuch, that when his horse was seen tied to Van Tassel’s paling, on
a Sunday night, a sure sign that his master was courting, or, as it is
termed, “sparking,” within, all other suitors passed by in despair, and
carried the war into other quarters.
Such was the formidable rival with whom Ichabod Crane had to contend,
and, considering all things, a stouter man than he would have shrunk
from the competition, and a wiser man would have despaired.
To have taken the field openly against his rival would have been
madness; for he was not a man to be thwarted in his armours any
more than that stormy lover, Achilles. Ichabod, therefore, made
his advances in a quiet and gently-insinuating manner. Under cover
of his character of singing-master, he made frequent visits at the
farmhouse; not that he had anything to apprehend from the meddlesome
interference of parents, which is so often a stumbling-block in the
path of lovers. Balt Van Tassell was an easy indulgent soul; he loved
his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and
an excellent father, let her have her way in everything. His notable
little wife, too, had enough to do to attend to her housekeeping and
manage her poultry; for, as she sagely observed, ducks and geese are
foolish things, and must be looked after, but girls can take care of
themselves. Thus, while the busy dame bustled about the house, or
plied her spinning-wheel at one end of the piazza, honest Balt would
sit smoking his evening pipe at the other, watching the achievements
of a little wooden warrior, who, armed with a sword in each hand, was
most valiantly fighting the wind on the pinnacle of the barn. In the
meantime, Ichabod would carry on his suit with the daughter by the
side of the spring under the great elm, or sauntering along in the
twilight, that hour so favorable to the lover’s eloquence.
He who wins a thousand common hearts is therefore entitled to some
renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette,
is indeed a hero. Certain it is, this was not the case with the
redoubtable Brom Bones; and from the moment Ichabod Crane made his
advances, the interests of the former evidently declined; his horse was
no longer seen tied at the palings on Sunday nights, and a deadly feud
gradually arose between him and the preceptor of Sleepy Hollow.
He was gaunt and shagged, with a ewe neck and a head like a hammer; his
rusty mane and tail were tangled and knotted with burrs; one eye had
lost its pupil, and was glaring and spectral; but the other had the
gleam of genuine devil in it. Still he must have had fire and mettle in
his day, if we may judge from the name he bore of Gunpowder. He had, in
fact, been a favorite steed of his master’s the choleric Van Ripper,
who was a furious rider, and had infused, very probably, some of his
own spirit into the animal; for, old and brokendown as he looked, there
was more of the lurking devil in him than in any young filly in the
country.
Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a steed. He rode with short
stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the
saddle; his sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers’; he carried his
whip perpendicularly in his hand, like a sceptre, and, as his horse
jogged on, the motion of his arm was not unlike the flapping of a pair
of wings. A small wool hat rested on the top of his nose, for so his
scanty strip of forehead might be called; and the skirts of his black
coat fluttered out almost to the horse’s tail. Such was the appearance
of Ichabod and his steed, as he shambled out of the gate of Hans Van
Ripper, and it was altogether such an apparition as is seldom to be met
with in broad daylight.
It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day, the sky was clear and
serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always
associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their
sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been
nipped by the frost into brilliant dyes of orange, purple and scarlet.
Streaming files of wild ducks began to make their appearance high
in the air; the bark of the squirrel might be heard from the groves
of beech and hickory nuts, and the pensive whistle of the quail at
intervals from the neighboring stubble-field. The small birds were
taking their farewell banquets. In the fulness of their revelry, they
fluttered, chirping and frolicking, from bush to bush, and tree to
tree, capricious from the very profusion and variety around them.
As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his eye, ever open to every
symptom of culinary abundance, ranged with delight over the treasures
of jolly autumn. On all sides he beheld vast store of apples; some
hanging in oppressive opulence on the trees; some gathered into
baskets and barrels for the market; others heaped up in rich piles for
the cider-press. Farther on he beheld great fields of Indian corn,
with its golden ears peeping from their leafy coverts, and holding
out the promise of cakes and hasty pudding; and the yellow pumpkins
lying beneath them, turning up their fair round bellies to the sun,
and giving ample prospects of the most luxurious of pies; and anon
he passed the fragrant buckwheat fields, breathing the odor of the
beehive, and as he beheld them, soft anticipations stole over his
mind of dainty slapjacks, well buttered, and garnished with honey or
treacle, by the delicate dimpled hand of Katrina Van Tassel.
Thus, feeding his mind with many sweet thoughts and “sugared
suppositions,” he journeyed along the sides of a range of hills which
look out upon some of the goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson. The
sun gradually wheeled his broad disk down into the west. The wide
bosom of the Tappan Zee lay motionless and glassy, excepting that here
and there a gentle undulation waved and prolonged the blue shadow of
the distant mountain. A few amber clouds floated in the sky, without
a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint,
changing gradually into a pure apple green, and from that into the deep
blue of the mid-heaven. A slanting ray lingered on the woody crests of
the precipices that overhung some parts of the river, giving greater
depth to the dark-gray and purple of their rocky sides. A sloop was
loitering in the distance, dropping slowly down with the tide, her sail
hanging uselessly against the mast; and as the reflection of the sky
gleamed along the still water, it seemed as if the vessel was suspended
in the air.
It was toward evening that Ichabod arrived at the castle of the Heer
Van Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the
adjacent country. Old farmers, a spare leathern-faced race, in homespun
coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and magnificent
pewter buckles. Their brisk withered little dames, in close crimped
caps, long-waisted short-gowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors
and pincushion, and gay calico pockets hanging on the outside. Buxom
lassies, almost as antiquated as their mothers, excepting where a
straw hat, a fine ribbon, or perhaps a white frock, gave symptoms of
city innovation. The sons, in short square-skirted coats with rows
of stupendous brass buttons, and their hair generally queued in the
fashion of the times, especially if they could procure an eel-skin
for the purpose, it being esteemed, through the country, as a potent
nourisher and strengthener of the hair.
Brom Bones, however, was the hero of the scene, having come to the
gathering on his favorite steed Daredevil, a creature, like himself,
full of mettle and mischief, and which no one but himself could manage.
He was, in fact, noted for preferring vicious animals, given to all
kinds of tricks, which kept the rider in constant risk of his neck, for
he held a tractable well-broken horse as unworthy of a lad of spirit.
Fain would I pause to dwell upon the world of charms that burst upon
the enraptured gaze of my hero, as he entered the state parlor of
Van Tassel’s mansion. Not those of the bevy of buxom lassies, with
their luxurious display of red and white; but the ample charms of a
genuine Dutch country tea-table, in the sumptuous time of autumn. Such
heaped-up platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds,
known only to experienced Dutch housewives! There was the doughty
doughnut, the tenderer oly koek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller;
sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the
whole family of cakes. And then there were apple pies and peach pies
and pumpkin pies; besides slices of ham and smoked beef; and moreover
delectable dishes of preserved plums, and peaches, and pears, and
quinces; not to mention broiled shad and roasted chickens, together
with bowls of milk and cream, all mingled higgledy-piggledy, pretty
much as I have enumerated them, with the motherly tea-pot sending up
its clouds of vapor from the midst--Heaven bless the mark! I want
breath and time to discuss this banquet as it deserves, and am too
eager to get on with my story. Happily, Ichabod Crane was not in so
great a hurry as his historian, but did ample justice to every dainty.
He was a kind and thankful creature, whose heart dilated in proportion
as his skin was filled with good cheer; and whose spirits rose with
eating as some men’s do with drink. He could not help, too, rolling
his large eyes round him as he ate, and chuckling with the possibility
that he might one day be lord of all this scene of almost unimaginable
luxury and splendor. Then, he thought, how soon he’d turn his back upon
the old school-house; snap his fingers in the face of Hans Van Ripper,
and every other niggardly patron, and kick any itinerant pedagogue out
of doors that should dare to call him comrade!
Old Baltus Van Tassel moved about among his guests with a face dilated
with content and good humor, round and jolly as the harvest moon. His
hospitable attentions were brief, but expressive, being confined to a
shake of the hand, a slap on the shoulder, a loud laugh and a pressing
invitation to “fall to, and help themselves.”
And now the sound of the music from the common room, or hall, summoned
to the dance. The musician was an old grayheaded negro, who had been
the itinerant orchestra of the neighborhood for more than half a
century. His instrument was as old and battered as himself. The greater
part of the time he scraped on two or three strings, accompanying every
movement of the bow with a motion of the head; bowing almost to the
ground, and stamping with his foot whenever a fresh couple were to
start.
Ichabod prided himself upon his dancing as much as upon his vocal
powers. Not a limp, not a fibre about him was idle; and to have seen
his loosely hung frame in full motion, and clattering about the room,
you would have thought Saint Vitus himself, that blessed patron of the
dance, was figuring before you in person. He was the admiration of all
the negroes; who, having gathered, of all ages and sizes, from the farm
and the neighborhood, stood forming a pyramid of shining black faces at
every door and window, gazing with delight at the scene, rolling their
white eyeballs, and showing grinning rows of ivory from ear to ear. How
could the flogger of urchins be otherwise than animated and joyous? The
lady of his heart was his partner in the dance, and smiling graciously
in reply to all his amorous oglings; while Brom Bones, sorely smitten
with love and jealousy, sat brooding by himself in one corner.
When the dance was at an end, Ichabod was attracted to a knot of the
sager folks, who, with old Van Tassel, sat smoking at one end of the
piazza, gossiping over former times, and drawing out long stories about
the war.
This neighborhood, at the time of which I am speaking, was one of
those highly-favored places which abound with chronicle and great men.
The British and American line had run near it during the war; it had,
therefore, been the scene of marauding, and infested with refugees,
cowboys, and all kinds of border chivalry. Just sufficient time had
elapsed to enable each story-teller to dress up his tale with a little
becoming fiction, and in the indistinctness of his recollections, to
make himself the hero of every exploit.
There was the story of Doffue Martling, a large blue-bearded Dutchman,
who had nearly taken a British frigate with an old iron nine-pounder
from a mud breastwork, only that his gun burst at the sixth discharge.
And there was an old gentleman who shall be nameless, being too rich
a mynheer to be lightly mentioned, who, in the battle of Whiteplains,
being an excellent master of defence, parried a musket ball with a
small sword, insomuch that he absolutely felt it whiz round the blade,
and glance off at the hilt: in proof of which, he was ready at any time
to show the sword, with the hilt a little bent. There were several
more that had been equally great in the field, not one of whom but was
persuaded that he had a considerable hand in bringing the war to a
happy termination.
But all these were nothing to the tales of ghosts and apparitions
that succeeded. The neighborhood is rich in legendary treasures
of the kind. Local tales and superstitions thrive best in these
sheltered long-settled retreats; but are trampled under foot by the
shifting throng that forms the population of most of our country
places. Besides, there is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our
villages, for they have scarcely had time to finish their first nap,
and turn themselves in their graves, before their surviving friends
have travelled away from the neighborhood; so that when they turn out
at night to walk their rounds, they have no acquaintance left to call
upon. This is perhaps the reason why we so seldom hear of ghosts except
in our long-established Dutch communities.
The immediate cause, however, of the prevalence of supernatural
stories in these parts was doubtless owing to the vicinity of Sleepy
Hollow. There was a contagion in the very air that blew from that
haunted region; breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and fancies
infecting all the land. Several of the Sleepy Hollow people were
present at Van Tassel’s, and, as usual, were doling out their wild and
wonderful legends. Many dismal tales were told about funeral trains,
and mourning cries and wailings heard and seen about the great tree
where the unfortunate Major Andre was taken, and which stood in the
neighborhood. Some mention was made also of the woman in white, that
haunted the dark glen at Raven Rock, and was often heard to shriek on
winter nights before a storm, having perished there in the snow. The
chief part of the stories, however, turned upon the favorite specter of
Sleepy Hollow, the headless horseman, who had been heard several times
of late, patroling the country; and, it was said, tethered his horse
nightly among the graves in the church-yard.
The sequestered situation of this church seems always to have made it
a favorite haunt of troubled spirits. It stands on a knoll, surrounded
by locust-trees and lofty elms, from among which its decent whitewashed
walls shine modestly forth, like Christian purity beaming through the
shades of retirement. A gentle slope descends from it to a silver sheet
of water, bordered by high trees, between which, peeps may be caught at
the blue hills of the Hudson. To look upon its grass-grown yard, where
the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at
least the dead might rest in peace. On one side of the church extends
a wide woody dell, along which raves a large brook among broken rocks
and trunks of fallen trees. Over a deep black part of the stream, not
far from the church, was formerly thrown a wooden bridge; the road that
led to it, and the bridge itself, were thickly shaded by overhanging
trees, which cast a gloom about it, even in the daytime; but occasioned
a fearful darkness at night. This was one of the favorite haunts of
the headless horseman; and the place where he was most frequently
encountered. The tale was told of old Brouwer, a most heretical
disbeliever in ghosts, how he met the horseman returning from his foray
into Sleepy Hollow, and was obliged to get up behind him; how they
galloped over bush and brake, over hill and swamp, until they reached
the bridge; when the horseman suddenly turned into a skeleton, threw
old Brouwer into the brook, and sprang away over the tree-tops with a
clap of thunder.
This story was immediately matched by thrice marvelous adventure of
Brom Bones, who made light of the galloping Hessian as an arrant
jockey. He affirmed that, on returning one night from the neighboring
village of Sing Sing, he had been overtaken by this midnight trooper;
that he had offered to race with him for a bowl of punch, and should
have won it too, for Daredevil beat the goblin horse all hollow,
but just as they came to the church bridge, the Hessian bolted, and
vanished in a flash of fire.
All these tales, told in that drowsy undertone with which men talk in
the dark, the countenances of the listeners only now and then receiving
a casual gleam from the glare of a pipe, sank deep in the mind of
Ichabod. He repaid them in kind with large extracts from his invaluable
author, Cotton Mather, and added many marvelous events that had taken
place in his native State of Connecticut, and fearful sights which he
had seen in his nightly walks about Sleepy Hollow.
The revel now gradually broke up. The old farmers gathered together
their families in their wagons, and were heard for some time rattling
along the hollow roads, and over the distant hills. Some of the
damsels mounted on pillions behind their favorite swains, and their
light-hearted laughter, mingling with the clatter of hoofs, echoed
along the silent woodlands, sounding fainter and fainter until they
gradually died away--and the late scene of noise and frolic was all
silent and deserted. Ichabod only lingered behind, according to the
custom of country lovers, to have a tete-a-tete with the heiress, fully
convinced that he was now on the high road to success.
Without looking to the right or left to notice the scene of rural
wealth, on which he had so often gloated, he went straight to the
stable, and with several hearty cuffs and kicks, roused his steed most
uncourteously from the comfortable quarters in which he was soundly
sleeping, dreaming of mountains of corn and oats, and whole valleys of
timothy and clover.
It was the very witching time of night that Ichabod, heavy-hearted and
crest-fallen, pursued his travel homewards, along the sides of the
lofty hills which rise above Tarrytown, and which he had traversed
so cheerily in the afternoon. The hour was as dismal as himself. Far
below him, the Tappan Zee spread its dusky and indistinct waste of
waters, with here and there the tall mast of a sloop, riding quietly
at anchor under the land. In the dead hush of midnight, he could even
hear the barking of the watchdog from the opposite shore of the Hudson;
but it was so vague and faint as only to give an idea of his distance
from this faithful companion of man. Now and then, too, the long-drawn
crowing of a cock, accidentally awakened, would sound far, far off,
from some farmhouse away among the hills--but it was like a dreaming
sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, but occasionally
the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a
bull-frog, from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably, and
turning suddenly in his bed.
All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard in the
afternoon, now came crowding upon his recollection. The night grew
darker and darker; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and
driving clouds occasionally hid them from his sight. He had never felt
so lonely and dismal. He was, moreover, approaching the very place
where many of the scenes of the ghost stories had been laid. In the
centre of the road stood an enormous tulip tree, which towered like a
giant above all the other trees of the neighborhood, and formed a kind
of landmark. Its limbs were gnarled, and fantastic, large enough to
form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost to the earth, and
rising again into the air. It was connected with the tragical story of
the unfortunate Andre, who had been taken prisoner hard by; and was
universally known by the name of Major Andre’s tree. The common people
regarded it with mixture of respect and superstition, partly out of
sympathy for the fate of its ill-starred namesake, and partly from the
tales of strange sights and doleful lamentations told concerning it.
As Ichabod approached this fearful tree, he began to whistle: he
thought his whistle was answered--it was but a blast sweeping sharply
through the dry branches. As he approached a little nearer, he thought
he saw something white, hanging in the midst of the tree--he paused and
ceased whistling; but on looking more narrowly, perceived that it was a
place where the tree had been scathed by lightning, and the white wood
laid bare. Suddenly he heard a groan--his teeth chattered and his knees
smote against the saddle: it was but the rubbing of one huge bough upon
another, as they were swayed about by the breeze. He passed the tree in
safety, but new perils lay before him.
The denouement and catastrophe are fully described on a following page
(147) where Brom Bones threw the fatal pumpkin that eventful night.
Rip Van Winkle
Washington Irving now delights us with
his story of Rip Van Winkle
The following tale was found among the papers of the late Diedrich
Knickerbocker, an old gentleman of New York, who was very curious in
the Dutch history of the province, and the manners of the descendants
from its primitive settlers. His historical researches, however, did
not lie so much among books as among men; for the former are lamentably
scanty on his favorite topics; whereas he found the old burgers, and
still more their wives, rich in that legendary lore, so invaluable to
true history. Whenever, therefore, he happened upon a genuine Dutch
family, snugly shut up in its low-roofed farmhouse, under a spreading
sycamore, he looked upon it as a little clasped volume of black letter,
and studied it with the zeal of a bookworm.
The result of all these researches was a history of the province during
the reign of the Dutch governors, which he published some years
since. There have been various opinions as to the literary character
of his work, and, to tell the truth, it is not a whit better than it
should be. Its chief merit is its scrupulous accuracy, which indeed
was a little questioned on its first appearance, but has since been
completely established; and it is now admitted into all historical
collections, as a book of unquestionable authority.
Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill
mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian
family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a
noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change
of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day,
produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains,
and they are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect
barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in
blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening
sky; but, sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they
will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the
last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of
glory.
At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may have descried
the light smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle-roofs gleam
among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into
the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little village of
great antiquity, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists,
in the early times of the province, just about the beginning of the
government of the good Peter Stuyvesant (may he rest in peace!), and
there were some of the houses of the original settlers standing within
a few years, built of small yellow bricks brought from Holland, having
latticed windows and gable fronts, surmounted with weathercocks.
In the same village, and in one of these very houses (which, to tell
the precise truth was sadly time worn and weatherbeaten), there lived
many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great
Britain, a simple, good-natured fellow of the name of Rip Van Winkle.
He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the
chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege
of Fort Christina. I have observed that he was a simple good-natured
man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient hen-pecked
husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that
meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for
those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who
are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless,
are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic
tribulation; and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the
world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A
termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a
tolerable blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.
Certain it is, that he was a great favorite among all the good wives of
the village, who as usual, with the amiable sex, took his part in all
family squabbles; and never failed, whenever they talked those matters
over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van
Winkle. The children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever
he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings,
taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories
of ghosts, witches, and Indians. Whenever he went dodging about the
village, he was surrounded by a troop of them, hanging on his skirts,
clambering on his back, and playing a thousand tricks on him with
impunity; and not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighborhood.
The great error in Rip’s composition was an insuperable aversion to all
kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from the want of assiduity
or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with rod as long and
heavy as a Tartar’s lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even
though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry
a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through
woods and swamps and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels
or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbor even in
the roughest toil, and was a foremost man at all country frolics
for husking Indian corn, or building stone fences; the women of the
village, too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such
little odd jobs as their less obliging husbands would not do for them.
In a word Rip was ready to attend to anybody’s business but his own;
but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it
impossible.
In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his farm; it was the
most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country; everything
about it went wrong, and would go wrong, in spite of him. His fences
were continually falling to pieces; his cow would either go astray or
get among the cabbages; weeds were sure to grow quicker in his fields
than anywhere else; the rain always made a point of setting in just as
he had some outdoor work to do; so that though his patrimonial estate
had dwindled away under his management, acre by acre, until there was
little more left than a mere patch of Indian corn and potatoes, yet it
was the worst conditioned farm in the neighborhood.
Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of foolish,
well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or
brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would
rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself, he
would have whistled life away in perfect contentment; but his wife kept
continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness,
and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon and night,
her tongue was incessantly going, and everything he said or did was
sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but one way
of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use,
had grown into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head,
cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a
fresh volley from his wife; so that he was fain to draw off his forces,
and take to the outside of the house--the only side which, in truth,
belongs to a henpecked husband.
Rip’s sole domestic adherent was his dog, Wolf, who was as much
henpecked as his master; for Dame Van Winkle regarded them as
companions in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an evil eye,
as the cause of his master’s going so often astray. True it is, in
all points of spirit befitting an honorable dog, he was as courageous
an animal as ever scoured the woods--but what courage can withstand
the ever during and all-besetting terrors of a woman’s tongue? The
moment Wolf entered the house his crest fell, his tail dropped to the
ground, or curled between his legs, he sneaked about with a gallows
air, casting many a sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the
least flourish of a broomstick or ladle, he would fly to the door with
yelping precipitation.
Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony
rolled on; a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is
the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use. For a long
while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting
a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle
personages of the village; which held its sessions on a bench before a
small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty George the
Third. Here they used to sit in the shade through a long lazy summer’s
day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless sleepy
stories about nothing.
From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length routed by his
termagant wife, who would suddenly break in upon the tranquillity of
the assemblage and call the members all to naught; nor was that august
personage, Nicholas Vedder himself, sacred from the daring tongue of
this terrible virago, who charged him outright with encouraging her
husband in habits of idleness.
Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only
alternative, to escape from the labor of the farm and clamor of his
wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods. Here
he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share
the contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathized as
a fellow-sufferer in persecution. “Poor Wolf,” he would say, “thy
mistress leads thee a dog’s life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst
I live thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee!” Wolf would wag
his tail, look wistfully in his master’s face, and if dogs can feel
pity I verily believe he reciprocated the sentiment with all his heart.
In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day, Rip had
unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill
mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel shooting, and
the still solitudes had echoed and re-echoed with the reports of his
gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on
a green knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow
of a precipice. From an opening between the trees he could overlook
all the lower country for many a mile of rich woodland. He saw at a
distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent
but majestic course, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail
of a lagging bark, here and there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at
last losing itself in the blue Highlands.
On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, wild,
lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from the
impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the
setting sun. For some time Rip lay musing on this scene; evening was
gradually advancing; the mountains began to throw their long blue
shadows over the valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he
could reach the village, and he heaved a heavy sign when he thought of
encountering the terrors of Dame Van Winkle.
As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance,
hallooing, “Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!” He looked round, but
could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across the
mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived him, and turned again
to descend, when he heard the same cry ring through the still evening
air: “Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!”--at the same time Wolf bristled
up his back, and giving a low growl, skulked to his master’s side,
looking fearfully down into the glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension
stealing over him; he looked anxiously in the same direction, and
perceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending
under the weight of something he carried on his back. He was surprised
to see any human being in this lonely and unfrequented place, but
supposing it to be some of the neighborhood in need of his assistance,
he hastened down to yield it.
On nearer approach he was still more surprised at the singularity of
the stranger’s appearance. He was a short, square-built old fellow,
with thick bushy hair, and a grizzled beard. His dress was of the
antique Dutch fashion--a cloth jerkin strapped round the waist--several
pair of breeches, the outer one of ample volume, decorated with rows
of buttons down the sides, and bunches at the knees. He bore on his
shoulder a stout keg, that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for
Rip to approach and assist him with the load. Though rather shy and
distrustful of this new acquaintance, Rip complied with his usual
alacrity; and mutually relieving one another, they clambered up a
narrow gully, apparently the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they
ascended, Rip every now and then heard long rolling peals, like
distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather
cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted.
He paused for an instant, but supposing it to be the muttering of
one of those transient thunder-showers which often take place in
mountain heights, he proceeded. Passing through the ravine, they came
to a hollow, like a small amphitheatre, surrounded by perpendicular
precipices, over the brinks of which impending trees shot their
branches, so that you only caught glimpses of the azure sky and the
bright evening cloud. During the whole time Rip and his companion had
labored on in silence; for though the former marvelled greatly what
could be the object of carrying a keg of liquor up this wild mountain,
yet there was something strange and incomprehensible about the unknown,
that inspired awe and checked familiarity.
On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of wonder presented
themselves. On a level spot in the centre was a company of odd-looking
personages playing at nine-pins. They were dressed in a quaint
outlandish fashion; some wore short doublets, others jerkins, with
long knives in their belts, and most of them had enormous breeches,
of similar style with that of the guide’s. Their visages, too, were
peculiar: one had a large beard, broad face, and small piggish eyes:
the face of another seemed to consist entirely of nose, and was
surmounted by a white sugarloaf hat set off with a little red cock’s
tail. They all had beards, of various shapes and colors. There was one
who seemed to be the commander. He was a stout old gentleman, with a
weather-beaten countenance; he wore a laced doublet, broad belt and
hanger, high-crowned hat and feather, red stockings, and high-heeled
shoes, with roses in them. The whole group reminded Rip of the figures
in an old Flemish painting, in the parlor of Dominie Van Shaick, the
village parson, and which had been brought over from Holland at the
time of the settlement.
What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though these folks were
evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces,
the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy
party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the
stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they
were rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder.
As Rip and his companion approached them they suddenly desisted from
their play, and stared at him with such fixed statue-like gaze, and
such a strange, uncouth, lack-lustre countenances, that his heart
turned within him, and his knees smote together. His companion now
emptied the contents of the keg into large flagons, and made signs to
him to wait upon the company. He obeyed with fear and trembling; they
quaffed the liquor in profound silence, and then returned to their game.
By degrees Rip’s awe and apprehension subsided. He even ventured, when
no eye was fixed upon him, to taste the beverage, which he found had
much of the flavor of excellent Hollands. He was naturally a thirsty
soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the draught. One taste provoked
another; and he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often that at
length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, his head
gradually declined, and he fell into a deep sleep.
On waking, he found himself on the green knoll when he had first seen
the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes--it was a bright sunny
morning. The birds were hopping and twittering among the bushes, and
the eagle was wheeling aloft, and breasting the pure mountain breeze.
“Surely,” thought Rip, “I have not slept here all night.” He recalled
the occurrences before he fell asleep. The strange man with a keg of
liquor--the mountain ravine--the wild retreat among the rocks--the
woe-begone party at nine-pins--the flagon--“Oh! that flagon! that
wicked flagon!” thought Rip--“what excuse shall I make to Dame Van
Winkle!”
He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean well-oiled
fowling-piece, he found an old firelock lying by him, the barrel
encrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and the stock worm-eaten.
He now suspected that the grave roysters of the mountain had put a
trick upon him, and, having dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of
his gun. Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he might have strayed away
after a squirrel or partridge. He whistled after him and shouted his
name, but all in vain; the echoes repeated his whistle and shout, but
no dog was to be seen.
He determined to revisit the scene of the last evening’s gambol, and if
he met with any of the party, to demand his dog and gun. As he rose to
walk, he found himself stiff in the joints, and wanting in his usual
activity. “These mountain beds do not agree with me,” thought Rip, “and
if this frolic should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall
have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle.” With some difficulty he got
down into the glen: he found the gully up which he and his companion
had ascended the preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain
stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling
the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble
up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch,
sassafras, and witch hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by
the wild grapevines that twisted their coils or tendrils from tree to
tree, and spread a kind of network in his path.
At length he reached to where the ravine had opened through the cliffs
to the amphitheatre; but no traces of such opening remained. The rocks
presented a high impenetrable wall over which the torrent came tumbling
in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a broad deep basin, black
from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip was
brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was
only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in
air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure
in their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man’s
perplexities. What was to be done? the morning was passing away, and
Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up
his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do to
starve among the mountains. He shook his head, shouldered the rusty
firelock, and, with a heart full of trouble and anxiety, turned his
steps homeward.
As he approached the village he met a number of people, but none
whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he thought himself
acquainted with every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was
of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They all
stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast
their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant
recurrence of this gesture induced Rip, involuntarily, to do the same,
when to his astonishment, he found his beard had grown a foot long!
He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop of strange
children ran at his heels, hooting after him, and pointing at his
gray beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he recognized for an old
acquaintance, barked at him as he passed.
The very village was altered; it was larger and more populous. There
were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had
been his familiar haunts had disappeared. Strange names were over the
doors--strange faces at the windows--everything was strange. His mind
now misgave him; he began to doubt whether both he and the world around
him were not bewitched. Surely this was his native village, which he
had left but the day before. There stood the Kaatskill mountains--there
ran the silver Hudson at a distance--there was every hill and dale
precisely as it had always been--Rip was sorely perplexed--“That flagon
last night,” thought he, “has addled my poor head sadly!”
It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his own house,
which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the
shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone to decay--the
roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A
half-starved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about. Rip called
him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on.
This was an unkind cut indeed--“My very dog,” sighed poor Rip, “has
forgotten me!”
He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame Van Winkle had
always kept in neat order. It was empty, forlorn, and apparently
abandoned. This desolateness overcame all his connubial fears--he
called loudly for his wife and children--the lonely chambers rang for a
moment with his voice, and then all again was silence.
He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, the village
inn--but it too was gone. A large rickety wooden building stood in its
place, with great gaping windows, some of them broken and mended with
old hats and petticoats, and over the door was painted, “the Union
Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle.” Instead of the great tree that used to
shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall
naked pole, with something on the top that looked like a red night-cap,
and from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage
of stars and stripes--all this was strange and incomprehensible.
He recognized on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George,
under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe; but even this was
singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue
and buff, a sword was held in the hand instead of a sceptre, the head
was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large
characters, GENERAL WASHINGTON.
There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that
Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed.
There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of
the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity. He looked in vain for
the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair
long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco smoke instead of idle speeches;
or Van Brummel, the schoolmaster, doling forth the contents of an
ancient newspaper. In place of these, a lean, bilious-looking fellow,
with his pockets full of handbills, was haranguing vehemently about
rights of citizens--elections--members of congress--liberty--Bunker’s
Hill--heroes of seventy-six--and other words, which were a perfect
Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle.
The appearance of Rip, with his long grizzled beard, his rusty
fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and an army of women and children at
his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern politicians. They
crowded round him eying him from head to foot with great curiosity.
The orator bustled up to him, and drawing him partly aside, inquired
“on which side he voted?” Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another
short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and, rising on
tiptoe, inquired in his ear, “Whether he was Federal or Democrat?”
Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend the question; when a knowing,
self-important old gentleman, in sharp cocked hat, made his way
through the crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows
as he passed and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm
a-kimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat
penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, demanded in an austere
tone, “what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder,
and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the
village?”--“Alas! gentlemen,” cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, “I am a
poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king,
God bless him!”
Here a general shout burst from the bystanders--“A tory! a tory! a spy!
a refugee! hustle him! away with him!” It was with great difficulty
that the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order; and,
having assumed a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded again of the
unknown culprit, what he came there for, and whom he was seeking? The
poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely came
there in search of some of his neighbors, who used to keep about the
tavern.
“Well--who are they?--name them.”
Rip bethought himself a moment, and inquired, “Where’s Nicholas Vedder?”
There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a
thin piping voice, “Nicholas Vedder! why, he is dead and gone these
eighteen years! There was a wooden tombstone in the churchyard that
used to tell all about him, but that’s rotten and gone too.”
“Where’s Brom Dutcher?”
“Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war; some say he
was killed at the storming of Stony Point--others say he was drowned
in a squall at the foot of Antony’s Nose. I don’t know--he never came
back again.”
“Where’s Van Bummel, the schoolmaster?”
“He went off to the war too, was a great militia general, and is now in
congress.”
Rip’s heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in his home and
friends, and finding himself thus alone in the world. Every answer
puzzled him too, by treating of such enormous lapses of time, and of
matters which he could not understand war--congress--Stony Point;--he
had no courage to ask after any more friends, but cried out in despair,
“Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?”
“Oh, Rip Van Winkle!” exclaimed two or three, “Oh, to be sure! that’s
Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree.”
Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself, as he went
up the mountain apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor
fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity,
and whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his
bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, and what
was his name?
“God knows,” exclaimed he, at his wits’ end; “I’m not myself--I’m
somebody else--that’s me yonder--no--that’s somebody else got into my
shoes--I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and
they’ve changed my gun, and everything’s changed, and I can’t tell
what’s my name, or who I am!”
The bystanders began now to look at each other, nod, wink
significantly, and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There was
a whisper, also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow
from doing mischief, at the very suggestion of which the self-important
man in the cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this critical
moment a fresh comely woman pressed through the throng to get a peek
at the gray-bearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms, which,
frightened at his looks, began to cry. “Hush, Rip,” cried she, “hush,
you little fool; the old man won’t hurt you.” The name of the child,
the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of
recollections in his mind. “What is your name, my good woman?’ asked he.
“Judith Gardenier.”
“And your father’s name?”
“Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it’s twenty years
since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard
of since--his dog came home without him; but whether he shot himself,
or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a
little girl.”
Rip had but one question more to ask; but he put it with a faltering
voice:
“Where’s your mother?”
“Oh, she too had died but a short time since; she broke a blood-vessel
in a fit of passion at a New England peddler.”
There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. The honest
man could contain himself no longer. He caught his daughter and her
child in his arms. “I am your father!” cried he--“Young Rip Van Winkle
once--old Rip Van Winkle now!--Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle?”
All stood amazed, until an old woman, tottering out from among the
crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering under it in his face for a
moment, exclaimed, “Sure enough! it is Rip Van Winkle--it is himself!
Welcome home again, old neighbor--Why, where have you been these twenty
long years?”
Rip’s story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been to him
but as one night. The neighbors stared when they heard it; some were
seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks: and
the self-important man in the cocked hat, who, when the alarm was
over, had returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his mouth,
and shook his head--upon which there was a general shaking of the head
throughout the assemblage.
It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old Peter
Vanderdonk, who was seen slowly advancing up the road. He was a
descendant of the historian of that name, who wrote one of the earliest
accounts of the province. Peter was the most ancient inhabitant of the
village, and well versed in all the wonderful events and traditions
of the neighborhood. He recollected Rip at once, and corroborated his
story in the most satisfactory manner. He assured the company that
it was a fact, handed down from his ancestor the historian, that the
Kaatskill mountains had always been haunted by strange beings. That it
was affirmed that the great Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of
the river and country, kept a kind of vigil there every twenty years,
with his crew of the Half-moon; being permitted in this way to revisit
the scenes of his enterprise, and keep a guardian eye upon the river,
and the great city called by his name. That his father had once seen
them in their old Dutch dresses playing at nine-pins in a hollow of
the mountains; and that he himself had heard, one summer afternoon, the
sound of their balls, like distant peals of thunder.
To make a long story short, the company broke up, and returned to
the more important concerns of the election. Rip’s daughter took him
home to live with her; she had a snug, well-furnished house, and a
stout cheery farmer for a husband, whom Rip recollected for one of the
urchins that used to climb upon his back. As to Rip’s son and heir,
who was the ditto of himself, seen leaning against the tree, he was
employed to work on the farm; but evinced an hereditary disposition to
attend to any thing else but his business.
Rip now resumed his old walks and habits; he soon found many of his
former cronies, though all rather the worse for wear and tear of time;
and preferred making friends among the rising generation, with whom he
soon grew into great favor.
Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when
a man can be idle with impunity, he took his place once more on the
bench at the inn door, and was reverenced as one of the patriarchs of
the village, and a chronicle of the old times “before the war.” It was
some time before he could get into the regular track of gossip or
could be made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place
during his torpor. How that there had been a revolutionary war--that
the country had thrown off the yoke of old England--and that, instead
of being a subject of his Majesty George the Third, he was now a free
citizen of the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician; the
changes of states and empires made but little impression on him; but
there was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned,
and that was--petticoat government. Happily that was at an end; he had
got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out
whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle.
Whenever her name was mentioned, however, he shook his head, shrugged
his shoulders, and cast up his eyes; which might pass either for an
expression of resignation to his fate, or joy at his deliverance.
He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Mr.
Doolittle’s hotel. He was observed, at first, to vary on some points
every time he told it, which was, doubtless, owing to his having so
recently awaked. It at last settled down precisely to the tale I have
related, and not a man, woman, or child in the neighborhood, but knew
it by heart. Some always pretended to doubt the reality of it, and
insisted that Rip had been out of his head, and that this was one
point on which he always remained flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants,
however, almost universally gave it full credit. Even to this day they
never hear a thunderstorm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill,
but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of
nine-pins in the neighborhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands,
that they might have a quieting draught out of Rip Van Winkle’s flagon.
The story of Rip Van Winkle may seem incredible to many, but
nevertheless I give it my full belief, for I know the vicinity of our
old Dutch settlements to have been very subject to marvelous events and
appearances. Indeed, I have heard many stranger stories than this, in
the villages along the Hudson; all of which were too well authenticated
to admit of a doubt. I have even talked with Rip Van Winkle myself,
who, when last I saw him, was a venerable old man, and so perfectly
rational and consistent on every other point, that I think no
conscientious person could refuse to take this into the bargain; nay, I
have seen a certificate on the subject taken before a country justice
and signed with a cross, in the justice’s own handwriting. The story,
therefore, is beyond the possibility of doubt.
The Kaatsberg, or Catskill mountains, have always been a region full of
fable. The Indians considered them the abode of spirits, who influenced
the weather, spreading sunshine or clouds over the landscape, and
sending good or bad hunting seasons. They were ruled by an old squaw
spirit, said to be their mother. She dwelt on the highest peak of the
Catskill, and had charge of the doors of day and night to open and
shut them at the proper hour. She hung up the new moons in the skies,
and cut up the old ones into stars. In times of drought, if properly
propitiated, she would spin light summer clouds out of cobwebs and
morning dew, and send them off from the crest of the mountain, flake
after flake, like flakes of carded cotton, to float in the air; until,
dissolved by the heat of the sun, they would fall in gentle showers,
causing the grass to spring, the fruits to ripen, and the corn to grow
an inch an hour. If displeased, however, she would brew up clouds black
as ink, sitting in the midst of them like a bottle-bellied spider in
the midst of its web; and when these clouds broke, woe betide the
valleys!
In old times, say the Indian traditions, there was a kind of Manitou or
Spirit, who kept about the wildest recesses of the Catskill mountains,
and took a mischievous pleasure in wreaking all kinds of evils and
vexations upon the red men. Sometimes he would assume the form of a
bear, a panther, or a deer, lead the bewildered hunter a weary chase
through tangled forests and among ragged rocks; and then spring off
with a loud ho! ho! leaving him aghast on the brink of a beetling
precipice or raging torrent.
The favorite abode of this Manitou is still shown. It is a great rock
or cliff on the loneliest part of the mountains, and from the flowering
vines which clamber about it, and the wild flowers which abound in
its neighborhood is known by the name of the Garden Rock. Near the
foot of it is a small lake, the haunt of the solitary bittern, with
water-snakes basking in the sun on the leaves of the pond-lilies which
lie on the surface. This place was held in great awe by the Indians,
insomuch that the boldest hunter would not pursue his game within its
precincts. Once upon a time, however, a hunter who had lost his way,
penetrated to the garden rock, where he beheld a number of gourds
placed in the crotches of trees. One of these he seized and made off
with it; but in the hurry of his retreat he let it fall among the
rocks, when a great stream gushed forth, which washed him away and
swept him down precipices, where he was dashed to pieces, and the
stream made its way to the Hudson, and continues to flow to the present
day; being the identical stream known by the name of the Kaaters-kill.
Sunnyside
The Home of Many Memories
As our “Washington Irving” sails the bright waters of Tappan Zee he
speaks familiarly of his dear Sunnyside as “The Roost”--the “Wolfert
Roost” of old Baltus Van Tassel and his fair daughter Katrina. Where
Ichabod Crane lingered that eventful night after all the guests were
gone which preceded his dramatic ride with the “Headless Horseman”
referred to more fully in his “Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
Irving aptly described Sunnyside as “made up of gable-ends, and full
of angles and corners as an old cocked hat. It is said, in fact,
to have been modeled after the hat of Peter the Headstrong, as the
Escurial of Spain was fashioned after the gridiron of the blessed St.
Lawrence.” Wolfert’s Roost (Roost signifying Rest) took its name from
Wolfert Acker, a former owner. It consisted originally of ten acres
when purchased by Irving in 1855, but several acres were afterwards
added. With great humor Irving put above the porch entrance “George
Harvey, Boum’r,” Boumeister being an old Dutch word for architect. A
storm-worn weathercock, “which once battled with the wind on the top
of the Stadt House of New Amsterdam in the time of Peter Stuyvesant,
erects his crest on the gable, and a gilded horse in full gallop, once
the weathercock of the great Van der Heyden palace of Albany, glitters
in the sunshine, veering with every breeze, on the peaked turret over
the portal.”
About fifty years ago a cutting of Walter Scott’s favorite ivy at
Melrose Abbey was transported across the Atlantic, and trained over the
porch of “Sunnyside,” by the hand of Mrs. Renwick, daughter of Rev.
Andrew Jeffrey of Lochmaben, known in girlhood as the “Bonnie Jessie”
of Annandale, or the “Blue-eyed Lassie” of Robert Burns:--a graceful
tribute, from the shrine of Waverly to the nest of Knickerbocker:
A token of friendship immortal
With Washington Irving returns!--
Scott’s ivy entwined o’er its portal
By the Blue-eyed Lassie of Burns.
Scott’s cordial greeting at Abbotsford, and his persistence in getting
Murray to reconsider the publication of the “Sketch Book,” which
he had previously declined, were never forgotten by Irving. It was
during a critical period of his literary career, and the kindness of
the Great Magician, in directing early attention to his genius, is
still cherished by every reader of the “Sketch Book” from Manhattan
to San Francisco. The hearty grasp of the minstrel at the gateway of
Abbotsford was in reality a warm handshake to a wider brotherhood
beyond the sea.
While he was building “Sunnyside” a letter came from Daniel Webster,
then Secretary of State, appointing him minister to Spain. It was
unexpected and unsolicited, and Webster remarked that day to a friend:
“Washington Irving today will be the most surprised man in America.”
Irving had already shown diplomatic ability in London in promoting
the settlement of the “Northwestern Boundary,” and his appointment
was received with universal favor. Then as now Sunnyside was already
a Mecca for travelers and, among many well known to fame, was a young
man, afterwards Napoleon the Third. Referring to his visit, Irving
wrote in 1853: “Napoleon and Eugenie, Emperor and Empress! The one
I have had as a guest at my cottage, the other I have held as a pet
child upon my knee in Granada. The last I saw of Eugenie Montijo, she
was one of the reigning belles of Madrid; now, she is upon the throne,
launched from a returnless shore, upon 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! I confess my personal
acquaintance with the individuals in this historical romance gives
me uncommon interest in it but I consider it stamped with danger and
instability, and as liable to extravagant vicissitudes as one of Dumas’
novels.” A wonderful prophecy completely fulfilled in the short space
of seventeen years.
Tappan Zee, at this point, is a little more than two miles wide
and over the beautiful expanse Irving has thrown a wondrous charm.
There is, in fact, “magic in the web” of all his works. A few modern
critics, lacking appreciation alike for humor and genius, may regard
his essays as a thing of the past, but as long as the Mahicanituk,
the ever-flowing Hudson, pours its waters to the sea, as long as Rip
Van Winkle sleeps in the blue Catskills or the “Headless Horseman”
rides at midnight along the Old Post Road _en route_ for Teller’s
Point, so long will the writings of Washington Irving be remembered and
cherished. We somehow feel the reality of every legend he has given us.
The spring bubbling up near his cottage was brought over, as he gravely
tells us, in a churn from Holland by one of the old time settlers, and
we are half inclined to believe it; and no one ever thinks of doubting
that the “Flying Dutchman,” Mynheer Van Dam, has been rowing for two
hundred years and never made a port. It is in fact still said by the
old inhabitants, that often in the soft twilight of summer evenings,
when the sea is like glass and the opposite hills throw their shadows
across it, that the low vigorous pull of oars is heard but no boat is
seen.
The Dreamland of the Pocantico and Sleepy Hollow
The old time Dreamland of Washington Irving has been consecrated
since 1859 as his resting place where worshippers come with reverend
footsteps to read on the plain slab this simple inscription:
“Washington Irving, born April 3, 1783. Died November 28, 1859,” and
recall Longfellow’s beautiful lines:
“Here lies the gentle humorist, who died
In the bright Indian Summer of his fame,
A simple stone, with but a date and name,
Marks his secluded resting-place beside
The river that he loved and glorified.
Here in the autumn of his days he came,
But the dry leaves of life were all aflame
With tints that brightened and were multiplied.
How sweet a life was his, how sweet a death;
Living to wing with mirth the weary hours,
Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer;
Dying to leave a memory like the breath
Of Summers full of sunshine and of showers,
A grief and gladness in the atmosphere.”
Sleepy Hollow Church, like Sunnyside, is hidden away from the steamer
tourist by summer foliage. Just before reaching Kingston Point
lighthouse, a view, looking north-east up the little bay to the right,
will sometimes give the outline of the building. Beyond this a tall
granite shaft, erected by the Delevan family, is generally quite
distinctly seen, and this is near the grave of Irving. A lighthouse,
built in 1883, marks the point where the Pocantico or Sleepy Hollow
Creek joins the Hudson:
Pocantico’s hushed waters glide
Through Sleepy Hollow’s haunted ground,
And whisper to the listening tide
The name carved o’er one lowly mound.
Washington Irving at Home and Abroad
His writings, journeys, associations and his
life, by Wallace Bruce
The memory of Washington Irving rests like a ray of sunshine upon the
pages of our early history. Born in 1783, at the close of the great
struggle for Independence, his life of seventy-six years marks a period
of growth and material progress, the pages of which we have just been
turning, and it is peculiarly fitting to consider at this time in the
morning of our Twentieth Century the life and services of our sweetest
writer--the best representative of our early culture.
It is my purpose to consider his writings, his associations, and his
life, and I take up his works in the order in which they were written,
as in this way we trace the natural development of the writer and the
man.
“Knickerbocker,” his earliest work, written at the age of twenty-six,
bears the same relation to his later works as “Pickwick,” the first
heir of Dickens’ invention, to his novels that follow. And there is
another point of similarity in the fact that “Knickerbocker” and
“Pickwick” both outgrew the original design of the authors: neither
Irving nor Dickens, when he took pen in hand, had any idea of the
character of the work he was to produce. The philosophic and benevolent
Pickwick was barely rescued from being the head of a Nimrod Hunting
Club, with a character cut to fit a series of drawings that had been
purchased from the wife of a needy artist by a second-class publishing
house in London; and the idea of “Knickerbocker” at first was simply
to parody a small hand-book which had recently appeared, entitled “A
Picture of New York.” Following this plan, a humorous description of
the early governors of New Amsterdam was intended merely as a preface
to the customs and institutions of the city but like Buckle’s “History
of Civilization,” the preface became the body of the book, and all
idea of a parody was early and happily abandoned. The rise and fall
of the Dutch domination presented a subject of poetic unity. In the
character of the pseudo-historian we have the representative of a race
whose customs were fast passing away, and the serio-comic nature of
the work is intensified, and as it were italicized, at the very outset
by notices in the New York _Evening Post_ and other journals calling
attention to the mysterious disappearance of Diedrich Knickerbocker.
Never was any volume more happily introduced. Before we turn a single
page of the book we have an idea of the veritable writer. We see
him the representative of a noble Dutch family--first cousin of the
renowned Congressman of Schaghticoke. We become interested in the
mystery that surrounds him; in fact, the great charm of the book is in
the semi-reality, or assumed personality, of Deidrich Knickerbocker.
The portrait of Don Quixote, so familiar to every one, starting out
from La Mancha to redress the wrongs of the world, is not more clearly
drawn and has no more reality in our minds than the historian of New
Amsterdam, with his silver shoe-buckles and cocked hat, trudging along
the old post-road from village to village. But there is this difference
in the mind of the reader: in the great satire of Cervantes there is an
element of sadness. We see a crazed old gentleman going out in quest
of adventures exciting our pity, almost excusing the paradox of Lord
Byron, “The saddest of all tales, and more sad because it makes us
laugh;” but here there is only a mild sort of insanity about the old
gentleman with his books and papers, wandering off on long excursions
that touches our humor without exciting our sympathy. We see as it were
only a touch of the same malady which belongs to all writers “seeking
after immortality;” and, by the way, the books of humor we have here
associated--“Pickwick,” “Don Quixote,” and “Knickerbocker”--belong to
the same family, can be profitably studied together, and ought to stand
upon the same shelf in our libraries.
The philosopher Hume said “a turn for humor was worth to him ten
thousand a year,” and perhaps if this remark had been fully explained
to the early members of the New York Historical Society--to whom, by
the way, the volume was first dedicated--the following paragraph might
have been omitted from our Colonial History: “It is the misfortune of
this State,” the writer says, speaking of New York, “that its early
founders have been held up to the ridicule of the world by one of its
most gifted sons, who has exhausted the resources of his wit and satire
in exposing imaginary traits in their characters, while the most
polished efforts of his graver style have been reserved to adorn the
Corinthian columns of the more aristocratic institutions of foreign
countries. Founders of ancient dynasties have sometimes been deified
by their successors. New York is perhaps the only commonwealth whose
founders have been covered with ridicule from the same quarter.” Some
of the old Holland families are also reported to have taken the work in
high dudgeon as a rash invasion of the domain of history; and I believe
one of the gentle sex in Albany, who perhaps had no brother or lover
to fight a duel, proposed herself with her own hands to horse-whip
the offensive writer for his bold attempt, forsooth, at spelling and
printing for the first time some of the old family names.
From today’s standpoint these things seem ludicrous and uncalled
for in reference to a work abounding in kindly humor, everywhere
accepted as the finest blending of the classic and the comic in our
literature; and were it not that these early enemies soon became his
warmest friends, I would certainly pass it over in silence; but the
transition was so sudden and sincere that it is one of the pleasantest
features in his history, and Irving himself when preparing his revised
edition, refers to the matter with evident satisfaction in a prefatory
article facetiously styled “The Author’s Apology.” “When I find, after
a lapse of forty years, this haphazard production of my youth still
cherished among the descendants of the Dutch worthies; when I find its
very name become a household word, and used to give the home-stamp to
everything recommended for popular acceptance, such as Knickerbocker
societies, Knickerbocker insurance companies, Knickerbocker steamboats,
Knickerbocker omnibuses, Knickerbocker’s bread, and Knickerbocker ice;
and when I find New Yorkers of Dutch descent priding themselves upon
being genuine Knickerbockers--I please myself with the persuasion that
I have struck the right chord; that my dealings with the good old Dutch
times, and the customs and usages derived from them, are in harmony
with the feelings and humors of my townsmen; that I have opened a
vein of pleasant associations and quaint characteristics peculiar to
my native place, and which its inhabitants will not willingly suffer
to pass away; and that, though other histories of New York may appear
of higher claim to learned acceptance, and may take their appropriate
and dignified rank in the family library, Knickerbocker’s history will
still be received with good-humored intelligence, and be thumbed and
chuckled over by the family fireside.” It was indeed wide from the
sober aim of history, but no volume ever gave such rose-tint colors to
the early annals of any country, and New York, instead of being covered
with ridicule, is today the only State of this Union whose early
history is associated with the golden age of poetry, with “an antiquity
extending back into the regions of doubt and fable,” and it is safe to
say _that the streams of Scotland are no more indebted to the genius of
Robert Burns and Walter Scott than the Hudson and the Catskills to the
pen of Washington Irving_.
So much for the introduction, the first reception, and the success of
“Knickerbocker;” but I cannot refrain, in passing, from giving a few
illustrations from this most picturesque of histories. Perhaps the
sketch of the first governor of New Amsterdam is one of the happiest in
its outline and general filling:
“The renowned Wouter Van Twiller was descended from a long line of
Dutch burgomasters, who had comported themselves with such singular
wisdom and propriety that they were never either heard or talked of,
which, next to being universally applauded, should be the ambition of
all magistrates. He was a man shut up within himself, like an oyster;
but then it was allowed he seldom said a foolish thing. So invincible
was his gravity that he was never known either to laugh or to smile
through the whole course of a long and prosperous life. Nay, if a
joke were uttered in his presence that set light-minded hearers in
a roar, it was observed to throw him into a state of perplexity. He
was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five inches
circumference. His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a
vast expanse unfurrowed by any of those lines or angles which disfigure
the human countenance with what is termed expression. He daily took
his four stated meals, appropriating exactly an hour to each. He
smoked and doubted eight hours, and slept the remaining twelve of the
four-and-twenty. Such was the renowned Wouter Van Twiller governor
of the golden age of the province.” “Honest days,” as the historian
proceeds, “when every woman wore pockets, aye, and that, too, of a
goodly size, fashioned with patchwork into many curious devices and
ostentatiously worn on the outside. These, in fact, were convenient
receptacles where all good housewives carefully stored away such things
as they wished to have at hand, by which means they often came to be
incredibly crammed; and I remember there was a story current when I
was a boy that the lady of Wouter Van Twiller once had occasion to
empty her right pocket in search of a wooden ladle, when the contents
filled a couple of corn baskets, and the utensil was discovered lying
among some rubbish in one corner, but we must not give too much faith
to all these stories, the anecdotes of remote periods being very
subject to exaggeration.”
I pass over the tea parties and parlor gatherings, the dress and
manners, his chapters of philosophy and those “happy days of primeval
simplicity when there were neither public commotions nor private
quarrels, neither parties nor sects nor schisms, neither persecutions
nor trials nor punishments; when every man attended to what little
business he was lucky enough to have, or neglected it, if he pleased,
without asking the opinion of his neighbor; when nobody meddled with
concerns above his comprehension, nor neglected to correct his own
conduct in his zeal to pull to pieces the characters of others.” I
pass over the days of William the Testy, who first introduced the art
of fighting by proclamation the inroads of the Yankees with their
witchcraft--their inventions, their schoolmasters, and wandering
propensities--who “required only an inch to gain an ell, or a halter
to gain a horse; who from the time they first gained a foothold on
Plymouth Rock began to migrate, progressing and progressing from place
to place, making a little here and a little there, and controverting
the old proverb that a rolling stone gathers no moss. Hence they have
facetiously received the nickname of the Pilgrims,--that is to say, a
people who are always seeking a better country than their own.” We see
Antony Van Corlear, the celebrated trumpeter, on his diplomatic mission
up the Hudson--a chapter too dramatic for these degenerate days. We
see the noble army of Peter Stuyvesant passing in review before us,
and come with sorrow to the brief line in which the chivalric hero is
gathered to his fathers--“Well, den, hardkoppig Peter ben gone at last.”
In his first volume we would naturally look for his peculiar
characteristics as a writer, and we find a rich vein of humor and
invention; but here and there are gentle touches and the promise of
other qualities to which Walter Scott refers in a letter to Henry
Brevoort:
“I have never read anything so closely resembling the style of Dean
Swift as the ‘Annals of Diedrich Knickerbocker.’ I have been employed
these few evenings in reading them aloud to Mrs. Scott and two ladies
who are our guests, and our sides have been absolutely sore with
laughing. I think, too, there are passages which indicate that the
author possesses powers of a different kind, and has some touches which
remind me much of Sterne. I beg you will have the kindness to let me
know when Mr. Irving takes pen in hand again; for assuredly I shall
expect a very great treat, which I may chance never to hear of but
through your kindness.”
The prophecy of Scott waited ten years for its fulfilment, but it came
at last in the most charming collection of essays in our language--the
“Sketch Book”--which I divide into essays of character and sentiment,
English pictures and American legends. As representatives of the first
I take “The Broken Heart,” “The Wife,” “The Widow and Her Son.”
“The Broken Heart,” perhaps the greatest favorite of his character
sketches and the best transcript of his own early experience, seems to
me a gem in our literature. In the short space of six pages he portrays
the finer qualities of woman’s nature, and illustrates it with the
touching story of Curran’s daughter, whose heart was buried in the
coffin of Robert Emmet. This essay was suggested by a friend who had
seen the heroine at a masquerade and heard the plaintive song which
melted every one to tears:
“She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps.
* * * * *
She sings the wild songs of her dear native plains,
Every note which he loved awaking.
Ah! little they think who delight in her strains
How the heart of the minstrel is breaking.”
In the whole range of English literature I know of no pen except
Irving’s which could have written an essay like this in plain and
simple prose. We find the same tender sentiment in “Highland Mary”
and “Annabel Lee;” but poetry is the natural language of passion
and sorrow. Irving had often been likened to Addison, but in this
particular they have nothing in common. Edward Everett has well said:
“One chord in the human heart, the pathetic, for whose sweet music
Addison had no ear, Irving touched with the hand of a master. He
learned that skill in the school of early disappointment.” And in the
following passage we seem to hear its sad but sweet vibration still
responding through ten years of sorrow to the memory of her whose
hopes were entwined with his: “There are some strokes of calamity
which scathe and scorch the soul, which penetrate to the vital seat of
happiness and blast it, never again to put forth bud and blossom; and
let those tell her agony who have had the portals of the tomb suddenly
closed between them and the being they most loved on earth; who have
sat at its threshold as one shut out in a cold and lonely world whence
all that was most lovely and loving had departed.”
It is said when Lord Byron was dying at Missilonghi that he requested
his attendant to read to him “The Broken Heart.” While he was reading
one of the most touching portions the poet’s eyes moistened and he
said, “Irving never wrote that story without weeping, nor can I hear it
without tears;” and he added, “I have not wept much in this world, for
trouble never brings tears to my eyes, but I always have tears for ‘The
Broken Heart.’”
Soon after its publication in England, Irving met Mrs. Siddons. After
his introduction the queen of tragedy looked at him for a moment and
then, in her clear, deep-toned voice, she slowly enunciated, “You have
made me weep.” As Pierre Irving remarks in his “Life and Letters,”
“Nothing could have been finer than such a compliment from such a
source, but the ‘accost’ was so abrupt and the manner so peculiar that
our modest writer was completely disconcerted.” Some time afterward,
after the appearance of his “Bracebridge Hall,” they again met, and
singularly enough she addressed him in the self-same fashion--“You’ve
made me weep again.” “Ah!” replied Irving, “but you taught me first to
weep,” as he called up his first visit to London, fifteen years before
the “Sketch-Book” was written and the then wonderful power of this
actress without a rival.
Kindred to this essay which we have just considered, and well suited
as a companion-sketch, I select “The Wife,” a true picture of woman’s
power in adversity. As the story goes, his friend Leslie had married
a beautiful and accomplished girl, and, having an ample fortune it
was his ambition that her life should be a fairy-tale; but one day,
having embarked in speculation, his riches took to themselves wings
and he found himself reduced almost to penury. For a time he keeps
his situation to himself, but every look reveals his sorrow. When at
last he tells his story and we see her rising from a state of childish
dependence, becoming the support and comfort of her husband in his
misfortune, and follow them from a mansion to a cottage, we feel that
the last state of that man is better than the first. In the knowledge
and possession of such a heart he had truer riches than diamonds can
symbolize, and to the credit of our better nature the words of Irving
are true: “There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly
fire which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which
kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity. No man
knows what the wife of his bosom is; no man knows what a ministering
angel she is, until he has gone with her through the fiery trials of
this world.” What a beautiful simile is this: “As the vine which has
long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and been lifted by it
into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt,
cling round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up its shattered
boughs, so is it beautifully ordered by Providence that woman, who is
the mere dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be
his stay and solace when smitten by sudden calamity, winding herself
into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the
drooping head and binding up the broken heart.”
Outside of the drama of Shakespeare and the pages of Walter Scott, I
know of no pictures of graceful womanhood so complete as those found
in Irving’s Sketch Book. It is said that the original of which this
character is a copy, was the wife of the poet Morris; and perhaps the
following incident gave rise to the suggestion which shows how little
truth popular rumor _needs_ for a sustaining diet. While minister at
Spain he received a letter from his brother saying that General Morris
requested permission to publish his story of “The Wife” in a periodical
of which he was proprietor, and Irving facetiously responded, “Give
my regards to General Morris, and tell him he is quite welcome to my
wife,--which is more than most of his friends could say.” (Perhaps Rip
Van Winkle would have been willing to have thrown in his.)
The other sketch to which we call attention in our division of
character and sentiment--“The Widow and her Son”--is one of the most
pathetic in the “Sketch Book,” and follows naturally the two we have
just considered. It seems to round out and complete Irving’s idea of
womanhood as seen in a maiden’s life, a wife’s devotion, and a mother’s
love. What depths of feeling in passages like this: “Oh! there is an
enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to her son that transcends
all other affections of the heart. It is neither to be chilled by
selfishness, nor daunted by danger, nor weakened by worthlessness,
nor stifled by ingratitude. She will sacrifice every comfort to his
convenience; she will surrender every pleasure to his enjoyment; she
will glory in his fame and exult in his prosperity; and, if misfortune
overtake him, he will be the dearer to her from misfortune; and, if
disgrace settle upon his name, she will still love and cherish him in
spite of his disgrace; and, if all the world beside cast him off, she
will be all the world to him.”
There are few passages in prose or poetry more touching than
the description of the mother’s effort to put on something like
mourning for her only son--a black ribbon or so, a faded black
handkerchief--showing the struggle between pious affection and utter
poverty.
All through these essays we seem to see a gentle spirit clouded by
some great sorrow, yet cheerful in spite of misfortune. What a change
has come over him since “Knickerbocker”! Lord Bacon says, “It is more
pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground than to
have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground.” This may
be true in pictures, but not in character; for the principal element
in that happy compound--a genuine man or woman--is _cheerfulness_,
and disposition naturally gloomy and foreboding is rarely ever so
thoroughly irradiated, even by the light of heaven, that we are not
chilled by contact. Misanthropy never improves by years: it is a
heart-thermometer ever below freezing-point even in the sunlight of
prosperity. But there are natures so bright and lightsome that no
clouds of misfortune can hide their cheering radiance; mellowed by
sorrow, and tempered by adversity, they shine forth in gentle gleams,
full of genial and tender expression; and I think this distinction
is one your own reading will justify: that we find in these essays
a bright spirit sobered by sorrow, but look in vain for a line of
misanthropy.
There is another element in Irving’s composition no less marked than
his humor and pathos--a reverence for antiquity which forms a marked
feature in the essays that we designate as English pictures. In his
“Rural Life” and “Christmas Sketches” we see his love for the old
English writers, and recognize the fact that Chaucer and Spenser were
among his favorite authors. These early poets were to him something
more than “wells of English undefiled.” They are rather like the lakes
of the Adirondacks, separated from each other and from us by events
which loom up like mountains in the world’s history, clear and cool in
far-off solitudes, reflecting in their bright mirrors the serenity of
earth and the broad expanse of heaven, responding to the gentle glow
of summer sunsets, holding quiet communion with the evening stars, and
awaking to rosy life at the first touch of morning.
The old English ballads have all the sparkles the energy, and rhythm
of our mountain streams, but Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Bunyon
are the fountains from which flows the river--_ay, the Hudson_--of
our language. Irving’s mind was early turned to these sources of our
literature, and we find the result of this study a pure and classic
style. What a beautiful acknowledgment is this: “The pastoral writers
of other countries appear as if they had paid nature an occasional
visit and become acquainted with her general charms, but the British
poets have lived and revelled with her; they have wooed her in her
most secret haunts; they have watched her minutest caprices; a spray
could not tremble in the breeze, a leaf could not rustle to the ground,
a diamond drop could not patter in the stream, a fragrance could not
exhale from the humble violet, nor a daisy unfold its crimson tints to
the morning, but it has been noticed by these impassioned and delicate
observers and wrought up into some beautiful morality.”
With this deep love for the old masters of English literature, we are
not surprised that Westminster Abbey, with its Poet’s Corner, should be
the subject of one of his earliest essays; and the principal feature of
this essay, and that which makes it the enduring one of all that have
been written on this venerable pile, is the native quality of reverence
and sincerity. And it is indeed pleasant in days, when flippant
writing is often received for wit and misspelled slang accepted for
originality to turn to these essays in which we see the nobility of a
royal heart, and feel that “Truth and Good and Beauty--the offspring
of God--are not subject to the changes which beset the invention of
men.” I make no quotation from this familiar essay. It possesses too
much unity to detach a paragraph or a sentence. I can only say I read
it over and over with the same interest today as years ago in the deep
shadow of that melancholy aisle at the tomb of the unfortunate Mary
Queen of Scots.
There is one other place in England where I took my pocket edition of
the “Sketch Book,”--to Stratford-on-Avon; for, more than any other man,
Irving is associated with the home and burial-place of the world’s
greatest poet. Writers without number, and many well known to fame,
have given their impressions of Stratford, but Irving’s description
supersedes them all. It seems as if the quiet and pensive character of
the man fits into the rural scenery of England--ay! as if the hills and
woodlands of Warwickshire, recognizing a kindred spirit to their gentle
Shakespeare, after the lapse of three centuries, had associated in
enduring framework and sweet companionship the living presence of our
gentlest writer. What a wonderful blending of the old and the new! Two
hundred and fifty years of progress, of struggle and invention! A new
nation rising into being, with its material trinity--the steam-engine,
the printing-press, and the telegraph. The single newspaper of Queen
Elizabeth unfolding in every town and city its crowded columns of daily
and hourly records from every quarter of the globe. Ariel and Puck, at
last thoroughly materialized, and dressed in comely muslin, whisper
to each other across a continent, and beyond the Bermudas, to the
far-off islands of the sea. It seems, indeed, a new world, separated
from the old by greater spaces than waste of waters or the lapse of
years; but in this companionship of Shakespeare and Irving we see the
enduring qualities of the human heart. In the deep sympathy of Irving’s
nature for the olden time we feel that he has added another charm to
Stratford--that we, as a nation, have a better claim to the great
poet. We muse at his grave. We wander along the gently-flowing Avon,
we rest beneath the great oaks of Sir Thomas Lucy, We pick flowers
in the garden of Ann Hathaway’s cottage; it seems as if Irving in
some way belongs here too, and we are not at all certain if the Bacon
theory is established but that Irving will come in for his share of the
dramas, as author of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream” or the “Merry Wives
of Windsor.” To pass from the very centre of “Merrie England,” with
its hallowed associations and rich inheritance of centuries, to the
mountains and valleys of our own country, would be a sudden transition
if the space were not bridged over and the distance dissipated in
one of the closing paragraphs of this essay: “I had been walking all
day in a complete delusion. I had surveyed the landscape through the
prism of poetry, which had tinged every object with the hues of the
rainbow. I had been surrounded with fancied beings, with mere airy
nothings conjured up by poetic power, yet which to me had all the charm
of reality; and I could but reflect on the singular gift of the poet,
to be able thus to spread the magic of his mind over the very face of
nature, to give to things and places a charm and character not their
own, and to turn this working day world into a perfect fairy-land.”
In this passage we find the best description of Irving’s own creative
faculty. This wizard influence which the traveller experiences at
Stratford is equally felt along the banks of the Hudson. The whole
landscape, from the Palisades to the Catskills, is seen today through
the prism of poetry--the magic of his mind spread over the loveliest
vale of the fairest stream that flows, and this working-day world
converted into a perfect fairy-land.
It is said that “walls must get the weather-stain before they grow the
ivy;” that legends like ghosts flourish best in an uncertain twilight,
or
“Where auld ruined castles gray
Nod to the moon.”
We expect to find legends flourishing in the gloaming mountains of old
Scotland. We have easy faith for the Knights of the Round Table, the
Tales of Robin Hood and the brave outlaws of Sherwood Forest. We see
the frozen mythology of Scandinavia every day melting into poetry, like
the fabled words of Plato or the thawed-out music of Baron Munchausen’s
flute. We read the story of Undine and Hildebrand, the “Arabian
Nights,” the prowess of the Cid, and the warm troubadour chivalry of
southern Europe; but what have we to do with legends and poetry in the
broad sunlight of the nineteenth century? These have no place when
facts and history pre-empt the soil.
Yes! but this adds to the wonder and charm of Irving’s creative power!
the romance of Europe was to be had for the gleaning. In America it had
to be created; and the wonder is that this which sprang up in a night
is more real than the legends which have grown and blossomed for a
thousand years. He touched the mountains and the valleys with the wand
of his fancy, and they were peopled with beings more substantial than
fairies, more real than history.
In his “Rip Van Winkle” and “Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” which I take
as illustrations of his American legends, we at once see that he is
one of the few writers who appreciate the fact that comedy is quite as
natural as tragedy. At every step in the story we see the impossible;
but after all we feel that it is none the less real. Bryant’s poem,
“The Kaaterskill Falls,” is at once full of unity, possibility, and
beauty; but it is a dream compared with the “Legend of Rip Van Winkle.”
At the time it was written we understand that Irving had never visited
the Catskill Mountains; in the legend itself we see traces of a German
superstition; but there is this feature in all his stories: wherever he
located them they seem at once to take root and flourish. This story is
too well known, to need delineation. The old Dutch village, with its
philosophers and sages; the shiftless but good-natured Van Winkle; the
strange adventure on the mountain; the return--it all passes before
our mind like a series of pictures: and we come to the closing scene,
which the play-writer would have done well to follow; for there is more
dramatic unity in the story than in the drama. “Does nobody here know
Rip Van Winkle?” “Oh! Rip Van Winkle,” exclaimed two or three. “Oh! to
be sure; there’s Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against a tree.” Rip
looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself as he went up the
mountain, apparently as lazy and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow
was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether
he was himself--or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment it was
again demanded what was his name. “God knows!” exclaimed he, at his
wits’ end. “I’m not myself. I’m some one else. That’s me yonder--no,
that’s somebody else got into my shoes. I was myself last night,
but I fell asleep on the mountains, and they’ve changed my gun, and
everything’s changed, and I’m changed, and I cannot tell what’s my name
or who I am.” At this critical moment a fresh comely woman pressed
through the throng to get a peep at the gray-bearded man. She had a
chubby child in her arms which, frightened at his looks, began to cry.
“Hush, Rip,” cried she, “the old man won’t hurt you.” The name of the
child, the air of the mother, the tone of the voice, all awakened a
train of recollections in his mind. “What is your name my good woman?”
asked he. “Judith Gardenier.” “And your father’s name?” “Oh, poor man!
Rip Van Winkle was his name. It’s twenty years since he went away from
home with his gun, and has never been heard of since. His dog came home
without him; but whether he shot himself or was carried away by the
Indians nobody can tell. I was then but a little girl.” Rip had but one
question more to ask, but he put it with a faltering voice. “Where’s
your mother?” “Oh! she, too, died but a short time since. She broke a
blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New England pedler.” There was a
drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. The honest man could
control himself no longer. He caught his daughter and child in his
arms. “I am your father!” cried he. “Young Rip Van Winkle once, old Rip
Van Winkle now. Does nobody here know poor Rip Van Winkle?”
This touch of humor, even in the most intense part of the drama, is
entirely consistent and does not disturb in the least its charming
reality. The same element is still more marked in the “Legend of Sleepy
Hollow.” and perhaps even in greater degree illustrates the reality of
Irving’s legends--their power of taking root and flourishing even in
the midst of history.
On the old post-road, half way between Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow, a
monument marks the spot where Major Andre was captured, erected in
1853 by the county of Westchester to the memory of the brave men who
could not be tempted by British gold. But this marble shaft with its
beautiful inscription lack the magnetic influence and the heartfelt
interest of the plain headstone in the burial-yard of Sleepy Hollow;
for in the universal heart of mankind the poet’s corner is dearer than
the hero’s tomb, although, as here, the hero springs from the common
people, and his monument commemorates the highest and the rarest
courage--the heroism of honesty!
Nay, more; the United States Government, in remembrance of Paulding’s
courage, gave him a large tract of land in Ohio, and from this revenue
one of his sons built one of the finest villas on the Hudson; but the
traveller today along our river, even the most loyal _American_, who
spells his country’s name with a good-sized capital letter and rightly
considers it the first in the alphabet of nations, turns with a deeper
reverence and a truer love to a little cottage near at hand, with its
quaint turrets and gables looking out on the tranquil waters of Tappan
Zee, the quiet home of Diedrich Knickerbocker--the Dutch Herodotus--the
writer of the gentle heart.
Everything that Irving has written about Tarrytown seems to partake
of the drowsy, dreamy influence that pervades the very atmosphere.
The “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” seems as native to the soil as the
bright, honest-faced flowers of their snug-sheltered gardens. As
Darwin or Huxley would say, Irving’s stories fit themselves to the
environments. They belong to the age and the time which they represent.
What a natural picture, one we all have seen, is this of old Baltus
Van Tassel dozing his life away in solid comfort, his bustling dame
completely occupied with her housekeeping and her poultry, letting
her rosy-cheeked daughter Katrina do just as she pleased, adding a
sage and sensible observation fully appreciated by each generation
and which may some day be endorsed by colleges and institutions of
learning, that “ducks and geese are foolish things and must be looked
after, but girls can take care of themselves.” We are introduced to
Ichabod Crane, the Yankee schoolmaster of the neighborhood, and Brom
Bones, his dangerous rival for the hand and fortune of Katrina. They
meet at a quilting-party at the house of Mynheer Van Tassel, where we
are entertained with ghostly stories of the olden time, including a
marvelous adventure of Brom Bones with the well-known goblin-rider, the
Headless Hessian of Sleepy Hollow.
Ichabod lingers after the company disperses,--the custom, I believe, of
old-time lovers; but something must have gone wrong in the interview,
for “he sallies forth with an air quite desolate and chopfallen, and
now at the very witching time of night he mounts his steed for his
homeward journey. Unluckily, his route was the very road over which
the headless horseman was wont to ride. The night grew darker and
darker. The stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky. He had never felt
so lonely and miserable. He passed the fearful tree where Major Andre
was captured, but in the dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of
the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen, black, and towering.
The hair of the affrighted pedagogue rose upon his head with terror.
To turn and fly was now too late, for with a scramble and a bound the
shadowy object put itself into motion and stood at once in the middle
of the road. Ichabod bethought himself of the galloping Hessian, and
quickened his steed with the hopes of leaving him behind. The stranger,
however, quickened his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up and
fell into a walk. The strange horseman did the same. His heart began to
sink within him. He endeavored to sing a psalm-tune, but his parched
tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. There was something in the
silence of his strange companion at once mysterious and appalling. It
was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which
brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky,
gigantic in height and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck
on perceiving that he was headless, but his horror was still more
increased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his
shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of the saddle.” His
terror rose to desperation, and, like Caius Cassius in Macaulay’s
poem of the “Battle of Lake Regillus,” he rode “for death and life;”
but the spectre started full jump with him. “Away, then, they dashed
through thick and thin, stones flying and sparks flashing at every
bound. Ichabod’s flimsy garments fluttered in the air as he stretched
his long, lank body away over his horse’s head in the eagerness of his
flight. ‘If I can but reach the bridge,’ thought Ichabod, ‘I’m safe.’
Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind
him. He even fancied that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive
kick, and his steed sprang upon the bridge. He thundered over the
resounding planks. He gained the opposite side. Then he saw the goblin
rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of launching his head
at him. He endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late.
It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash. He was tumbled
headlong into the dust, and the black steed and the goblin-rider passed
by like a whirlwind. The next day a saddle was found trampled in the
dirt; the tracks of horses deeply dented in the road, evidently at
furious speed, were traced to the bridge, beyond which, on the bank
of a broad part of the brook, where the water ran deep and black,
was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close beside it a
shattered pumpkin.”
Throughout the entire race we are reminded of the midnight ride of
Tarn o’Shanter when pursued by witches, and his strange adventure
at the Bridge of Doon. In fact, the old Dutch church is not a bad
representation of old Alloway Kirk, and there is still greater
resemblance in the fact that the _reality_ of the poem and the reality
of the story are not in the least affected by the humorous catastrophe.
The legends of “Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle” were introduced in
the “Sketch Book” as having been found among the papers of the late
Diedrich Knickerbocker. In touches of humor and gentleness of spirit
they are entirely consistent with the old gentleman’s character. The
wit and humor are always kindly, and these qualities find happy
illustration in the fact that Mr. Jesse Merwin, the original of Ichabod
Crane, whom Irving met at the house of Judge Van Ness, was always
proud of the delineation, and returned the compliment in the sincerest
way. Think of it! Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Ichabod Crane
survives the pumpkin catastrophe, woos and weds some other Katrina, and
names a son after Washington Irving. After Irving’s death a letter was
found among his papers--written by our Yankee schoolmaster, endorsed in
Irving’s own handwriting--“From Jesse Merwin the original of Ichabod
Crane.”
I have dwelt at length on the “Sketch Book,” for in these essays the
writer seems to have _unpacked_ every quality of his style. We find
Bracebridge Hall outlined in his “Christmas Sketches,” the spirit of
the Alhambra in “Westminster Abbey,” and Knickerbocker in his “American
Legends.”
It is, moreover, one of the few books that never grow old. It belongs
to the people, and is one of the best known of American books. A fine
critic and scholar, George Sumner, said that the “Sketch Book” was more
widely read in its original tongue than any in our language except
the “Vicar of Wakefield,” and Longfellow, in an address before the
Massachusetts Historical Society, pays it a beautiful tribute in the
following poetic paragraph:
“Every reader has his first book, one among all others which first
fascinates his imagination and excites and satisfies the desires of his
mind. To me this was the ‘Sketch Book’ of Washington Irving. How many
delightful works he has given us, written before and since! volumes of
history and fiction which illustrate his native land, and some of which
illuminate it and make the Hudson as romantic as the Rhine. Yet still
the charm of the ‘Sketch-Book’ remains unbroken, the old fascination
still lingers about it, and whenever I open its pages, I open also that
mysterious door which leads back into the haunted chambers of youth.”
“Bracebridge Hall,” his next volume, written at the suggestion of
Thomas Moore, gives us a fine picture of old-fashioned English life.
The book begins where most stories end--with a wedding gathering;
but when we are fairly introduced to the Hall and its hospitable
proprietor, we are in no hurry for the wedding to take place. In the
society of Lady Lilly-craft the old General, the tender-hearted Phoebe
Wilkins, old Simon and Christy, we are content to float on together for
months, if need be, through a social dream of five hundred pages. I
know of no gathering where the reader more thoroughly feels that he is
an invited guest. The story has none of the characteristics of a novel.
It possesses neither plot nor dramatic quality. The essays are strung
together like beads on a slender thread, and the value is in the beads
and not the string. We may forget the fair Julia and her brave Captain,
but the sketch of the “Stout Gentleman” and “St. Mark’s Eve” once read
are never forgotten. We may forget the day after we read it whether
the wedding took place in the morning or in the afternoon, whether
the bride had eyes blue or hazel, or like most of lovers, had none at
all; but the character of the old Squire, with his dogs, his whims and
kindly heart, who “taught his boys to ride, and shoot, and speak the
truth,” taken an enduring hold on the memory, when we close the volume
we feel that Lowell in his “Fable for the Critics” has given us in a
dozen lines a genuine crayon sketch:
“But allow me to speak what I honestly feel;
To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele;
Throw in all of Addison _minus_ the chill,
With the whole of that partnership, stock, and good-will
Mix well, and while stirring hum o’er as a spell
The fine old English gentleman: simmer it well.
Sweeten just to your own private liking; then strain,
That only the finest and clearest remain.
Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives
From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green leaves--
And you’ll have a choice nature not wholly deserving,
A name either English or Yankee--just Irving.”
Next to “Bracebridge Hall,” in order of publication, we have the “Tales
of a Traveller,” to my mind the most _unanchored_ of Irving’s writings,
and therefore lacking for the most part the great charm and unity of
his other essays, viz., local associations and attachments.
But, if any of his friends, on either side of the Atlantic, were
disposed to be critical, their censure was of short duration; for his
next work the “Life and Voyages of Columbus,” was a new departure in
the right direction. This event--the greatest in the annals of mankind,
the most daring and romantic in the domain of truth, the sublime energy
and perseverance of a man struggling with fate--was a happy subject for
his pen, and it was so carefully written, so graceful in style, and
so accurate in research, that Lord Jeffrey remarks in the _Edinburgh
Review_: “It will supersede every other work on the subject and never
itself be superseded.”
Compliments were now literally showered upon him on every hand. The
Royal Society of Literature voted the new historian one of their
fifty-guinea gold medals, and, with just pride, Irving writes to this
brother, “What makes this the more gratifying is that the other medal
is voted to Hallam, author of the ‘Middle Ages.’”
There is an incident connected with this medal worthy of notice. Some
years after his return to America, it was stolen from his brother’s
safe during a fire, but returned the same night by the thief, who slyly
opened the door of his brother’s residence and threw it into the hall.
This medal melted down into a mass of shapeless gold, the work of an
hour, would have been worth two hundred and fifty dollars. Even the
robber had respect for the guinea-stamp when it bore the inscription of
Washington Irving.
“The Chronicles of Granada,” his next volume, not only opens up, as the
writer says, a tract of history which had been overrun with the weeds
of fable, but also forms a natural introduction or threshold over which
we pass from the “History of Columbus” to the “Tales of the Alhambra,”
aptly styled by Prescott “the beautiful Spanish Sketch Book.”
His “Crayon Miscellany,” published on his return from Europe, contains
the “Tour on the Prairies” and the well-known essays, “Abbottsford” and
“Newstead Abbey.” Then follow the Spanish Legends, “Astoria” and the
“Adventures of Captain Bonneville.” The “Life of Goldsmith” comes next
in order--a labor of sympathy and love. The “Life of Mahomet” shows his
passion for Oriental history. “Wolfert Roost,” published at the age
of seventy-two, is full of the old-time humor of “Sleepy Hollow,” and
brings us to the crowning labor--the fitting capital of the column--his
“Life of Washington.”
Wonderful as these volumes are, which even in this brief review seem
to rise up before us like a new vision of the “Arabian Nights,” in
our literature they are only part and parcel of the poetry of his own
experience. His picturesque and varied essays are the natural product
of a varied and wandering life, and to feel the full beauty of his
works we must read them in the light of his early and later history.
When seventeen years of age he made his first voyage up the Hudson,
“in the good old times,” as he expresses it, “before steamboats and
railroads had driven all poetry and romance out of travel.” Three
years later we see him in the northern wilderness of New York _en
route_ for Ogdensburg and Montreal--a tedious journey in those days
of corduroy roads and unbridged rivers. After his return, we find him
at Ballston and Saratoga Springs, given up by his friends to die of
consumption. The following year we see him in southern Europe, in
quest of health at Marseilles, Genoa, and Sicily; at Rome, in company
with Washington Allston, half persuaded by the enthusiasm of genius
to try his own hand as an artist; at Paris, spending six months with
profit and pleasure, judging from his brief journal and correspondence;
then, through Belgium and Holland, to London, the great city of modern
civilization--yes, for centuries the university of the poet and writer,
compared with which New York, with its strange mixture of eighty
thousand inhabitants, must have seemed a parish school.
After two years’ absence he returns with health restored, resumes his
studies, and in his twenty-fourth year is admitted attorney-at-law.
But the following year we find him pursuing the main business of his
life--viz., literature and travel. The first number of _Salmagundi_
appears early in January. In March, his letters bear date Philadelphia;
in May, Fredericksburgh; in June, Richmond, drawn thither by the
magnetism and trial of Aaron Burr. The following season he makes two
trips to Montreal, and spends a number of weeks at the residence of
Judge Van Ness, now known as Lindenwald, home of the late Martin Van
Buren. We next see him at Baltimore and Washington--cities far removed
from New York in those primitive times when our traveller “spent three
days on the road and one night in a log-house.” In 1813 we find him
editor of the _Analectic Magazine_ in Philadelphia. In 1814, during
our second war with Great Britain we see him secretary of Governor
Tompkins, with the rank of colonel, bearing despatches through the
western wilderness to Sackett’s Harbor on Lake Ontario. At the close of
the war we see him in his brother’s counting-house in Liverpool. The
following season he makes a pilgrimage through the Welsh Mountains, the
central part of England, and the Highlands of Scotland. The next season
we find him harassed with business, until the failure and bankruptcy of
the firm swept away his brother’s fortune and his own; and at the age
of thirty-five Irving went up to London to commence life anew.
It seems as if the success of every man is in part the transcript of
the same story that Genius has less need of opportunity than adversity.
“That he that creeps from cradle on to grave,
Unskilled save in the velvet course of fortune,
Hath missed the discipline of noble hearts.”
In this fifteen years of wandering by land and sea, this general study
of human nature in every phase of life, we find a good capital and
rich experience for the coming essayist. Add this to a fine classical
education and a still finer course of reading from the English authors
of the Elizabethan and Augustan periods, under the guidance of his
brothers, all of whom had a taste for literature, and we have one side
of the equation of Washington Irving’s life. The question now is, What
is he equal to, what can he do? The study and discipline of every young
man find expression in the plain algebraic symbols _x_ × _y_--unknown
quantities in the unworked problem of life. Mere education may be
furnished by teacher, parent, or guardian, or it may be acquired by the
patience and perseverance of a youth like Elihu Burritt, who learns
eighty languages at the forge, but the result rests alone in the _will_
and _manhood_ of the individual; and it was this which supported Irving
when he wandered almost penniless through the streets of London, and in
the darkest hour of adversity, when urged by his brothers and his old
friend, Commodore Decatur, to come home and accept the first clerkship
of the navy at a salary of $2400 a year, led him to reply, “I am
determined not to return until I have sent some writings before me that
shall make me return to the smiles rather than skulk back to the pity
of my friends.”
It was this _faith in himself_ which published the first volume of
the “Sketch Book” at his own expense when declined by the London
publishers,--the reception of which in Britain, France, and Germany
silently answered the standing sneer of the English critic, “Who reads
an American book?”
The following season, happy in his success, we find him in Paris
writing “Bracebridge Hall,” and launching his brother Peter in a
steamboat enterprise with a rashness worthy of Colonel Sellers in the
“Gilded Age” of Mark Twain. We next see him at Leyden, Amsterdam,
Frankfort, and Heidelburg, visiting the castles and ruins along the
Rhine; then to Strasburg and through the Black Forest to the upper
waters of the Danube. On his way to Munich and Vienna, he visits the
battlefield of Blenheim; then through Moravia and Bohemia to Dresden,
where he remains six months tossed about, as he expresses it, on the
stream of society; then through the Hartz Mountains, to Paris, where he
remains one year and writes the “Tales of a Traveller.” On his return
from London he makes an excursion through Orleans and the centre of
France to Madrid, where, in the midst of books and manuscripts, he
works fourteen hours a day for ten months on the “History of Columbus.”
We next see him on his way through La Mancha and the desolate mountains
of the Morenas, well known today through the illustrations of Doré,
and rounds out the year in Spain with an Oriental dream of ten weeks in
the palace of the Alhambra. Diedrich Knickerbocker in the romantic land
of Cervantes, with a sovereignty as absolute as Sancho Panza’s firmly
established on the throne of Boabdil!
But an appointment from President Jackson breaks the enchantment, and
he repairs to London as Secretary of the American Legation. We see him
at Oxford University receiving a degree of LL.D., almost overwhelmed
by the acclamations of the students and cries of Ichabod Crane, Rip
Van Winkle, Diedrich Knickerbocker, and Geoffrey Crayon. We find him
at Newstead Abbey, occupying Lord Byron’s room by way of inspiration,
breathing in as it were the very oxygen of poetry among the surviving
oaks of Sherwood Forest. We see him travelling with Martin Van Buren,
on a Christmas holiday, through England; and after seventeen years of
absence he returns to his native country, the acknowledged pioneer of
American literature, and, like him whose name he honored, “first in the
hearts of his countrymen.”
At the solicitation of his friends, he receives a public banquet in his
native city, presided over by Chancellor Kent, pronounced by Charles
King, President of Columbia College,--the most successful dinner ever
given in the United States.
During the summer he visits the Catskill Mountains, and the White
Mountains, a section abounding with stories that never reach the
dignity of a legend. We see him on his “Tour of the Prairies” through
Ohio to the banks of the Mississippi and the Missouri.
In 1855 he purchases ten acres of land two miles south of Tarrytown,
and the Wolfert Roost of old Jacob Van Tassel is transformed into the
Sunnyside of Washington Irving. It seems strange that the old family
device, “Flourishing in sun and shade,” should be happily abbreviated
here in Sunnyside, and the three holly leaves given as a coat of arms
to his warlike ancestor, William de Irwin, by Robert Bruce on the
field of Bannockburn, should, after the lapse of five hundred years,
find poetic association in the ivy that twines about the porch of his
cottage, brought from the home of the minstrel, who has woven the stern
history of Scotland with the flowers of poesy--from Abbottsford, the
land of his fathers, transplanted by Mrs. Renwick, the “Blued-eyed
Lassie” of Robert Burns; and stranger still that this wanderer of the
family should associate this device with a _real_ family shield or
shelter, the only device of our broad land--the American home--and
gather under his own roof his brother and sister.
Busy and happy in the development of his plans, he declines the office
of mayor of the city of New York, and also the post of Secretary of
the Navy in the Cabinet of Martin Van Buren. Two years later, urged by
his friends and a personal letter of Daniel Webster, he accepts the
appointment of minister to Spain. He spends four years at Madrid in the
midst of revolution and insurrection; is summoned to London to assist
in the settlement of the Oregon claims; returns to Sunnyside, builds a
new tower to the cottage, and recommences the “Life of Washington.” He
is now seventy years of age, but we find him on his old familiar trips
to Baltimore and in the library of Washington, looking up material for
his history; for it was characteristic of the man, even to the close of
his life, whatever he did to do it accurately and well.
He spends a portion of the following summer at Saratoga and Niagara,
and his trip through the lakes calls up his first visit to the St.
Lawrence and the memories of his early life. A letter written at this
time to a niece in Paris shows the wonderful changes of fifty years,
presenting a contrast almost as effective and dramatic as the long
absence of his sleeping hero. It seemed necessary and fitting for the
traveller through many lands to come back again to this point of his
early wandering in order to complete the cycle of his life. “One of
the most interesting circumstances of my tour,” he writes, “was the
sojourn of a day at Ogdensburg. I had not been there since I visited
it in 1803, when I was but twenty years of age. All the country then
was a wilderness. We floated down the Black River in a scow; we toiled
through forests in wagons drawn by oxen; we slept in hunters’ cabins,
and were once four-and-twenty hours without food. Well, here I was
again after a lapse of fifty years. I found a populous city occupying
both banks of the Oswegatchie, connected by bridges. It was the
Ogdensburg of which a village plot had been planned at the time of our
visits. I sought the old French fort where we had been quartered: not a
trace of it was left. I sat under a tree on the site and looked round
upon what I had known as a wilderness, now teeming with life, crowded
with habitations. I walked to the point where I used to launch forth
in a canoe with the daughters of Mr. Ogden and Mr. Hoffman. It was now
a bustling landing-place for steamers. There were still some rocks
where I used to sit of an evening and accompany with my flute one of
the ladies who sang. I sat for a long time summoning recollections of
by-gone days and of the happy beings by whom I was then surrounded. All
had passed away! All were dead and gone! Of that young and joyous party
I was the sole survivor. They had all lived quietly at home, out of the
reach of mischance, yet had gone down to their graves, while I, who had
been wandering about the world, exposed to all hazards by sea and land,
was yet alive. I have often, in my shifting about the world, come upon
the traces of former existence, but I do not think anything has made a
stronger impression upon me than this my second visit to the banks of
the Oswegatchie.”
To come back again after the lapse of a century to the memory and
traces of his early life seems indeed like the fulfilment of Tennyson’s
dream in the “Sleeping Beauty,” and we wonder if the retrospect from
this lone standpoint of three score years and ten fulfilled the dreams
of the youth of twenty. Perhaps so! for it was the good fortune of
Irving to _realize_ his visions, and in this particular he stands
alone in the field of letters. Unlike the most of us, his “castles
in Spain” were of genuine marble, and he lived to walk beneath their
turrets and to know the richness of his inheritance. On one of his
last visits to London he was domiciled with a friend in a cloister of
Westminster Abbey, and in one of his midnight reveries he writes to
his sister: “How strange it seems to me that I should thus be nestled
quietly in the very heart of the old pile that used to be the scene
of my half-romantic, half-meditative haunts. It is like my sojourn in
the halls of the Alhambra. Am I always to have my dreams turned into
realities?”
Singularly enough, even Sunnyside itself is fore-shadowed in his
“Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” written in his thirty-sixth year, and the
reader of the “Sketch Book” will remember his reference, near the
beginning of the essay, to a little valley near Tarrytown, one of the
quietest places in the whole world; and he says, “If ever I should wish
for a retreat whither I might steal from the world and its distractions
and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none
more promising than this little valley.” Twenty-three years afterward
he writes to his brother from Spain: “I hope some day or other to sleep
my last sleep in this favorite resort of my boyhood;” and when the long
procession wound its way from Sunnyside through quiet Irvington and
Tarrytown among scenes which had found new charm in Irving’s life,
across the old bridge draped with mourning, past the Dutch church with
its hallowed memories of two hundred years, to the peaceful valley of
Sleepy Hollow, it seemed not so much a mourning procession as a poetic
pilgrimage--as if his dreams were realized in his last sleep; as if
there were a kindred sympathy in the words “dust to dust,” and that
the land he had filled with his legends was only receiving him to his
own. It was one of those warm November days which seem to belong to the
Hudson Valley, as mild and gentle as the spring-time, and the broad
river, every point of which is punctuated with exclamations of beauty,
lay tranquil as the heart of the gentle writer, as if it, too, missed a
friend and companion; for
“They do not err
Who say that when a poet dies
Mute Nature mourns her worshiper
And celebrates his obsequies.”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
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of words, and seemingly missing words have been retained as originally
published.
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