The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
“If you ever see a witty but rather local publication called Blackwood’s
Edinburgh Magazine, you will find some notice of your works in the last
number: the author is a friend of mine, to whom I have introduced you
in your literary capacity. His name is Lockhart, a young man of very
considerable talent, and who will soon be intimately connected with
my family. My faithful friend Knickerbocker is to be next examined and
illustrated. Constable was extremely willing to enter into consideration
of a treaty for your works, but I foresee will be still more so when
Your name is up, and may go
From Toledo to Madrid.
“----And that will soon be the case. I trust to be in London about the
middle of the month, and promise myself great pleasure in once again
shaking you by the hand.”
The first volume of the Sketch-Book was put to press in London, as I had
resolved, at my own risk, by a bookseller unknown to fame, and without
any of the usual arts by which a work is trumpeted into notice.
Still some attention had been called to it by the extracts which had
previously appeared in the Literary Gazette, and by the kind word
spoken by the editor of that periodical, and it was getting into fair
circulation, when my worthy bookseller failed before the first month was
over, and the sale was interrupted.
At this juncture Scott arrived in London. I called to him for help, as I
was sticking in the mire, and, more propitious than Hercules, he put his
own shoulder to the wheel. Through his favorable representations, Murray
was quickly induced to undertake the future publication of the work
which he had previously declined. A further edition of the first volume
was struck off and the second volume was put to press, and from that
time Murray became my publisher, conducting himself in all his dealings
with that fair, open, and liberal spirit which had obtained for him the
well-merited appellation of the Prince of Booksellers.
Thus, under the kind and cordial auspices of Sir Walter Scott, I began
my literary career in Europe; and I feel that I am but discharging, in
a trifling degree, my debt of gratitude to the memory of that
golden-hearted man in acknowledging my obligations to him. But who of
his literary contemporaries ever applied to him for aid or counsel that
did not experience the most prompt, generous, and effectual assistance?
W. I.
SUNNYSIDE, 1848.
THE SKETCH BOOK.
THE AUTHOR’S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF
I am of this mind with Homer, that as the snaile that crept out of her
shel was turned eftsoones into a toad, and thereby was forced to make a
stoole to sit on; so the traveller that stragleth from his owne country
is in a short time transformed into so monstrous a shape, that he is
faine to alter his mansion with his manners, and to live where he can,
not where he would.--LYLY’S EUPHUES.
I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange
characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and
made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of
my native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolument
of the town crier. As I grew into boyhood, I extended the range of my
observations. My holiday afternoons were spent in rambles about the
surrounding country. I made myself familiar with all its places famous
in history or fable. I knew every spot where a murder or robbery had
been committed, or a ghost seen. I visited the neighboring villages,
and added greatly to my stock of knowledge, by noting their habits and
customs, and conversing with their sages and great men. I even journeyed
one long summer’s day to the summit of the most distant hill, whence I
stretched my eye over many a mile of terra incognita, and was astonished
to find how vast a globe I inhabited.
This rambling propensity strengthened with my years. Books of voyages
and travels became my passion, and in devouring their contents, I
neglected the regular exercises of the school. How wistfully would
I wander about the pier-heads in fine weather, and watch the parting
ships, bound to distant climes; with what longing eyes would I gaze
after their lessening sails, and waft myself in imagination to the ends
of the earth!
Further reading and thinking, though they brought this vague inclination
into more reasonable bounds, only served to make it more decided. I
visited various parts of my own country; and had I been merely a lover
of fine scenery, I should have felt little desire to seek elsewhere
its gratification, for on no country had the charms of nature been more
prodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes, her oceans of liquid silver; her
mountains, with their bright aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with
wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes;
her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad, deep
rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests,
where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling
with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine;--no, never need
an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of
natural scenery.
But Europe held forth all the charms of storied and poetical
association. There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, the
refinements of highly cultivated society, the quaint peculiarities
of ancient and local custom. My native country was full of youthful
promise; Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age. Her very
ruins told the history of the times gone by, and every mouldering
stone was a chronicle. I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned
achievement--to tread, as it were, in the footsteps of antiquity--to
loiter about the ruined castle--to meditate on the falling tower--to
escape, in short, from the commonplace realities of the present, and
lose myself among the shadowy grandeurs of the past.
I had, besides all this, an earnest desire to see the great men of the
earth. We have, it is true, our great men in America: not a city but has
an ample share of them. I have mingled among them in my time, and been
almost withered by the shade into which they cast me; for there
is nothing so baleful to a small man as the shade of a great one,
particularly the great man of a city. But I was anxious to see the great
men of Europe; for I had read in the works of various philosophers, that
all animals degenerated in America, and man among the number. A great
man of Europe, thought I, must therefore be as superior to a great man
of America, as a peak of the Alps to a highland of the Hudson; and in
this idea I was confirmed by observing the comparative importance and
swelling magnitude of many English travellers among us, who, I was
assured, were very little people in their own country. I will visit this
land of wonders, thought I, and see the gigantic race from which I am
degenerated.
It has been either my good or evil lot to have my roving passion
gratified. I have wandered through different countries and witnessed
many of the shifting scenes of life. I cannot say that I have studied
them with the eye of a philosopher, but rather with the sauntering gaze
with which humble lovers of the picturesque stroll from the window
of one print-shop to another; caught sometimes by the delineations of
beauty, sometimes by the distortions of caricature, and sometimes by
the loveliness of landscape. As it is the fashion for modern tourists
to travel pencil in hand, and bring home their portfolios filled with
sketches, I am disposed to get up a few for the entertainment of my
friends. When, however, I look over the hints and memorandums I have
taken down for the purpose, my heart almost fails me, at finding how
my idle humor has led me astray from the great object studied by every
regular traveller who would make a book. I fear I shall give equal
disappointment with an unlucky landscape-painter, who had travelled on
the Continent, but following the bent of his vagrant inclination, had
sketched in nooks, and corners, and by-places. His sketch-book was
accordingly crowded with cottages, and landscapes, and obscure ruins;
but he had neglected to paint St. Peter’s, or the Coliseum, the cascade
of Terni, or the bay of Naples, and had not a single glacier or volcano
in his whole collection.
THE VOYAGE.
Ships, ships, I will descrie you
Amidst the main,
I will come and try you,
What you are protecting,
And projecting,
What’s your end and aim.
One goes abroad for merchandise and trading,
Another stays to keep his country from invading,
A third is coming home with rich and wealthy lading.
Hallo! my fancie, whither wilt thou go?
OLD POEM.
To an American visiting Europe, the long voyage he has to make is an
excellent preparative. The temporary absence of worldly scenes and
employments produces a state of mind peculiarly fitted to receive
new and vivid impressions. The vast space of waters that separate the
hemispheres is like a blank page in existence. There is no gradual
transition by which, as in Europe, the features and population of one
country blend almost imperceptibly with those of another. From the
moment you lose sight of the land you have left, all is vacancy, until
you step on the opposite shore, and are launched at once into the bustle
and novelties of another world.
In travelling by land there is a continuity of scene, and a connected
succession of persons and incidents, that carry on the story of life,
and lessen the effect of absence and separation. We drag, it is true,
“a lengthening chain” at each remove of our pilgrimage; but the chain is
unbroken; we can trace it back link by link; and we feel that the last
still grapples us to home. But a wide sea voyage severs us at once.
It makes us conscious of being cast loose from the secure anchorage of
settled life, and sent adrift upon a doubtful world. It interposes a
gulf, not merely imaginary, but real, between us and our homes--a
gulf, subject to tempest, and fear, and uncertainty, rendering distance
palpable, and return precarious.
Such, at least, was the case with myself. As I saw the last blue lines
of my native land fade away like a cloud in the horizon, it seemed as if
I had closed one volume of the world and its concerns, and had time for
meditation, before I opened another. That land, too, now vanishing from
my view, which contained all most dear to me in life; what vicissitudes
might occur in it--what changes might take place in me, before I should
visit it again! Who can tell, when he sets forth to wander, whither he
may be driven by the uncertain currents of existence; or when he may
return; or whether it may be ever his lot to revisit the scenes of his
childhood?
I said, that at sea all is vacancy; I should correct the impression. To
one given to day-dreaming, and fond of losing himself in reveries, a sea
voyage is full of subjects for meditation; but then they are the wonders
of the deep and of the air, and rather tend to abstract the mind from
worldly themes. I delighted to loll over the quarter-railing or climb to
the main-top, of a calm day, and muse for hours together on the tranquil
bosom of a summer’s sea; to gaze upon the piles of golden clouds just
peering above the horizon, fancy them some fairy realms, and people
them with a creation of my own;--to watch the gently undulating billows
rolling their silver volumes, as if to die away on those happy shores.
There was a delicious sensation of mingled security and awe with which I
looked down, from my giddy height, on the monsters of the deep at their
uncouth gambols: shoals of porpoises tumbling about the bow of the ship;