Chapter Washington Irving of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

In 1802, he published in the Morning Chronicle, a paper just established by his elder brother, Peter Irving, a series of letters signed Jonathan Oldstyle." These papers were in frank imitation of the Spectator and Tatler essays, full of boyish humor, and directed with the audacity of youth at some of the visible follies of the day.

First European Journey.

In 1804, Washington Irving was sent abroad by his brothers, who were anxious over the condition of his health. On this first visit, Irving was absent a year and a half. He touched at the Mediterranean ports and incidentally enjoyed the experience of a real capture by pirates. He sojourned four months in Paris, and the same length of time in London. He made acquaintance with many distinguished people and drank joyously of the romance of the Old World as found in its scenery, its manners, its languages, its literature, and its art. The experience was in every way broadening and educational; the youth became a man of the world. Pleased and stimulated as well as restored in health, he returned to America early in 1806.

Salmagundi, 1807.

A year later Irving, together with his intimate friend, James K. Paulding, and his brother, William Irving, joined in a rollicking bit of literary mystification -- the publication at irregular intervals of a lively little journal entitled Salmagundi.¹ This publication appeared anonymously throughout its successful career, which continued from January, 1807, to January, 1808, and included twenty numbers. The series was modeled upon the periodicals of Addison and Steele; the style was amateurish; the humor was of a coarser type, but it tickled the fancy of its readers from the start. Its modest programme was announced in the first number. "Our intention is simply to instruct the young, reform the old, correct the town, and castigate the age."

The Knickerbocker History, 1809.

Two years later, in December, 1809, appeared Irving's first notable work, the famous Knickerbocker History of New York. Its author was now twenty-six years old. He was still unsettled in his plans, although admitted to the bar; he was not attracted to his profession nor likely to make headway in its pursuit. The months just preceding had, moreover, been saddened by the experience of an overwhelming sorrow, and the depression of its shadow was not to be relieved for many years. Irving had become tenderly attached to the beautiful Matilda Hoffman, daughter of the gentleman in whose office he had followed the study of law. She was stricken with fatal illness, and with the gradual fading of her life in the almost constant presence of her devoted lover, the sunshine seemed to fade from the life of this hitherto light- hearted youth. It is a marvel that out of these months of doubt and gloom should have come a volume which is still recognized as the masterpiece of American humor -- for as such the Knickerbocker History may fairly be ranked.

A Masterpiece of Humor.

This inimitable epic of the doughty Dutch burghers of New Amsterdam purports to be the serious work of Diedrich Knickerbocker, in whose mystifying personality considerable interest had been aroused by very ingenious advertisements preceding the publication of the book. In the broadly humorous pages of the narrative, Irving's lively imagination runs with reckless abandon. In the golden age of the settlement, the renowned Wouter van Twiller sits in ominous silence, lost in his doubts and in the cloud of smoke rising from his pipe, until he emerges from both these hazy envelopments to pronounce judgment in the affairs of the colony. His successor, William the Testy, wiry and waspish, in his broad-skirted coat with its huge buttons, cocked hat stuck on the back of his head, and a cane as high as his chin, storms through the city; his soul burning like a vehement rushlight in his bosom, inciting him to incessant bickering and broils. Old Peter Stuyvesant, surnamed "the Headstrong," brilliantly clad in brimstone-colored breeches, stumps with his wooden leg before his admiring people and valiantly leads his army against the Swedes in that most awful of battles -- when "the earth shook as if struck by a paralytic stroke -- trees shrunk