Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
new Wall Street counted for less in his eyes than the pipe of old
Diedrich Knickerbocker. Its decadent Federalism that was clinging
to the wreck of its hopes, and its roistering Democracy that wore
greasy clothes, spoke with an Irish accent, and was marshaled to the
polls by Tammany Hall, were of less consequence to him than the black
bottle that brought such curious adventures to Rip Van Winkle. The
wit and romance he took pleasure in were of another sort than the
kind his generation was getting drunk on--more insubstantial, less
heady, picturesque rather than profitable. So Irving gently detached
himself from contemporary America, and detached he remained to the end
of a loitering life, untroubled by material ambitions, enjoying the
abundance of good things that fell in his way, mingling with prosperous
folk and liking everybody--men as diverse as John Jacob Astor and
Martin Van Buren and John P. Kennedy--and unconsciously taking the
color of his environment, careful to turn into limpid prose such
romantic tales as he came upon and achieving thereby both reputation
and profit--a pleasant blameless way of living, certainly, yet
curiously unrepresentative of the America in which chance had set him
and which was to claim him as its first man of letters.
An incorrigible _flâneur_, Irving’s business in life was to loaf
and invite the picturesque. A confirmed rambler in pleasant places,
in the many lands he visited he was a lover of the past rather than
the present, seeking to recreate the golden days of the Alhambra or
live over the adventurous mood of the fur trader. The immediate and
the actual was an unsatisfying diet for his dreams. There was in him
nothing of the calm aloofness of the intellectual that stands apart
to clarify its critical estimate, and none of the reforming zeal of
the Puritan that is at peace only in the thick of a moral crusade. The
duty of saving the world was not laid on his untroubled soul. No man
of his generation was less of a rebel than Irving, and he went his
way unconcerned at things that quite upset Fenimore Cooper’s peace of
mind. In his early days, to be sure, he broke with the ambitious middle
class--if gently drawing away can be called breaking--because he could
not bring himself to like its ways and the devastation those ways were
entailing on the leisurely world he loved. Revolutions seemed to him
somewhat vulgar affairs. The French Revolution had brought destruction
on too many lovely things, and the industrial revolution was taking
too heavy a toll of the picturesque, to please him. He thought it a
pity that steam should drive the clipper ship from the seas and put
an end to snug posting in the tally-ho. Progress might be bought at
too dear a price. The bluff squire with his hounds, the great hall
with its ancient yuletide customs, the patriarchal relations between
master and man, seemed to him more worth while than the things progress
was substituting for them; so he turned away from the new and gently
ingratiated himself into the past in order to gather up such fragments
of the picturesque as progress had not yet destroyed.
But only for a time. His dislike of capitalism rested on no more
substantial basis than its substitution of vulgar trousers for
gentlemanly smallclothes. It was too new to have achieved dignity or
the charm of assured position. When that time should come and masters
of finance should stand before the world as generous dispensers of
patronage, when the development of business should have produced its
new barons, Irving’s dislike would lessen and he would associate with
the new capitalism on the same easy terms that he associated with the
old feudalism. In the meantime he stood apart, unconcerned with praise
or blame. The industrial revolution might work itself out as it would.
The seventeen years he spent abroad on his great pilgrimage were black
years for England. Wretchedness and poverty were all about him if he
chose to see. The “condition of England” question was rising out of the
factory smoke to challenge the conscience of England. But he did not
choose to see and his conscience was untroubled. As he idled about the
countryside or visited the hospitable manor houses, his eye was caught
by the grace of medieval spires rising from parish churches rather than
by the condition of the proletariat. He saw no children working in the
coalpits, for he did not choose to visit the collieries. He sympathized
vaguely with the new social movements then getting under way, but it
was not in his nature to be partisan to a cause. He may not have been
a Tory but he had lived so long with Tories and enjoyed so frankly
the charm of upper-class society, that his outlook was unconsciously
determined by such intimate contacts. While Secretary to the Legation
at London in the reform years from 1829 to 1831, he was aware of the
tremendous stir all about him, but his infrequent references to the
Reform Bill in his letters turned usually on its disastrous effects on
the publishing business. Only once during his long residence abroad
does he seem to have felt deeply the significance of the current
revolutionary unrest, and the mood that swept him away from his
habitual indifference bears the marks of a sudden awakening. Writing
from London on March 1, 1831, he said:
We are in the beginning of an eventful week.... However, _the great
cause of all the world_ will go on. What a stirring moment it is
to live in. I never took such intense interest in the newspapers.
It seems to me as if life were breaking out anew with me, or
that I were entering upon quite a new and almost unknown career
of existence, and I rejoice to find my sensibilities, which were
waning as to many objects of past interest, reviving with all their
freshness and vivacity at the scenes and prospects opening around
me. I trust, my dear Brevoort, we shall both be spared to see a
great part of this grand though terrible drama that is about to
be acted. There will doubtless be scenes of horror and suffering,
but what splendid triumphs must take place over these vile systems
of falsehood in every relation of human affairs, that have been
woven over the human mind, and for so long a time have held it down
in despicable thraldom. (Pierre M. Irving, _Life and Letters of
Washington Irving_, Vol. II, p. 199.)
Irving lacked a month of being forty-nine when he wrote this confession
of interest in matters political. It marks the first appearance of
liberalism in his thinking, and the last--somewhat vague to be sure,
unduly bottomed on romantic expectations, yet significant in so placid
a life and explanatory of his course, when a year later he returned to
America to knit up once more the raveled threads of his interests. It
was as an incipient liberal that he came back to a land then in the
first flush of the Jacksonian victory, eager to discover a romantic
charm in the vast changes that had come during the seventeen years
he had been abroad. He plunged into the business of re-discovery
with enthusiasm. He was in want of new literary materials, and as
he took his bearings, his creative interest was stirred to write on
American themes. He went to Washington and for three months listened
to the great debate on Nullification. He talked with business men
and politicians, with those who were prosperous and prominent, and
he drifted easily with the tide of liberalism. To be sure he could
scarcely be called a Jacksonian. Parties and causes did not greatly
interest him even then. An intelligent man, indeed, could hardly be
less concerned about political principles. Thirty years before, as a
clever young man about town, he had gone with the dominant Federalism
of the times, and had amused himself with political ambitions. His
brother Peter was editor of the Lewisite paper the _Chronicle_, but
Josiah Ogden Hoffman, with whose firm Irving was connected during his
desultory incursion into the law and to whose daughter Matilda he
was betrothed, was an old Loyalist and ardent Hamiltonian. His wife,
to whom Irving was warmly attached, was a daughter of John Fenno,
Hamilton’s editor. Under such tutelage it was natural for Irving to
poke good-natured fun at President Jefferson’s red velvet breeches in
_Salmagundi_; but his venture into practical politics proving little to
his taste, he quickly gave over such ambitions. In a letter to a clever
young lady of Republican sympathies, he thus announced his abandonment
of political hopes:
I am as deep in mud and politics as ever a modern gentleman would
wish to be; and I drank beer with the multitude; and I talked
hand-bill fashion with the demagogues; and I shook hands with the
mob, whom my heart abhorreth.... Truly this saving one’s country
is a nauseous piece of business, and if patriotism is such a dirty
virtue,--prythee, no more of it. (_Life and Letters_, Vol. I, Chap.
XI.)
Years now separated him from that youthful experience. His long
absence from his native land had completely alienated him from
the fierce partisanship of contemporary America and he could view
matters political with calm detachment. Inclined to make the best
of any government _de facto_, he found it easy on his return to
accept Jacksonianism, and he soon discovered a genuine liking for Old
Hickory. “The more I see of this old cock of the woods,” he wrote
from Washington, “the more I relish his game qualities” (_ibid._,
Vol. II, p. 255). No doubt his early friend Paulding had much to do
with his ready acceptance of the new order, although he had come
in close contact with Martin Van Buren at the London legation and
was drawn to him. “He is one of the gentlest and most amiable men I
have ever met with,” he wrote to his brother, “with an affectionate
disposition that attaches itself to those around him, and wins their
kindness in return” (_ibid._, Vol. II, p. 220). Although distrustful
of some of the “elbow counsellors” of the Democracy he found little
cause for criticism and soon came to be regarded as one with them. The
Jacksonians were eager to make political capital out of his literary
reputation, and he was urged by Tammany Hall to stand for Congress and
later to accept a mayoralty candidacy. In 1837, probably through the
intervention of Paulding, he was offered a post in Van Buren’s cabinet.
These partisan offers he had the good sense to decline, but when in
1842 he was tendered the post of Minister to Spain he gladly seized the
opportunity to revisit a land he loved. His nephew is explicit in his
statement that the offer came wholly unsolicited, but Fenimore Cooper
was of another opinion.[423] Very likely Cooper was misinformed, but
whatever the truth the appointment was a godsend to Irving. His affairs
were in a bad way. The popularity of his writings was on the wane, the
panic had caught him with much of his capital invested in unprofitable
land speculations, and the “Roost” at Tarrytown was a heavy drain,
although he wrote whimsically, “I beat all the gentlemen farmers in
my neighborhood, for I can manage to raise my vegetables and fruits
at very little more than twice the market price” (_Life and Letters_,
Vol. II, p. 320). Only a severe nature like Cooper, sorely wounded
by the angry reception of his own honest criticism, would cavil at an
appointment so honorable to the government.
A friendly nature, Irving discovered friendliness wherever he went. His
own generosity appealed to the generosity of others, and he found it
easy in consequence to take a kindly view of men and parties. He was
harassed by none of Cooper’s quick suspicions and rigid principles, and
it must be added he had none of Cooper’s intuitive penetration into the
secret springs of human action that made the latter so acute a critic