At sixteen we find him in a lawyer's office; he does not, like some of his brothers, enjoy the advantages (if there be any) of a collegiate education. But he loves law as little as he loves mathematics. Feeble health gives occasion for frequent absences and journeyings; and it is plain to see that he loves a voyage up the Hudson, and adventurous travel through the wilds of Northern New York, better than he loves Judge Livingston, or the books of his law-patron, Mr. Hoffman. He has a scribbling mood upon him at this early day, too, and contributes to the New-York "Morning Chronicle" certain letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, which are remarked for their pleasant humor. At the age of twenty-one (1804) continued ill-health suggests a sea-voyage. He leaves law and his jolly companions,—Brevoort, Kemble, Paulding, and the rest,—and sails for Bordeaux. He wanders through Southern Europe delightedly,—meets Washington Allston at Rome, and is half tempted to turn painter,—sees Humboldt, De Staël, Cooke, Siddons; and while all England is jubilant over Nelson's victory, and all England mourning over Nelson's death, he sails, in 1806, for home.
Arrived in New York a sound man, he goes through a process of cramming for admission to the bar, and is presently instated—attorney-at-law. But at the very time of his examination he is concocting with James Paulding the project of "Salmagundi," which presently enlivens and perplexes people with the vagaries of Launcelot Langstaff. A little after, he plans and commences the Knickerbocker History.
But meantime an interesting episode of his life is developing, which by its unfortunate issue is to give a certain color to all after-expression of his sentiment. While in the family of Mr. Hoffman, as law-student, he has conceived a strong attachment for his daughter; in certain memoranda, marked "private," which come under the eyes of the biographer only after Mr. Irving's death, he says,—"I idolized her. I felt at times rebuked by her superior delicacy and purity, and as if I was a coarse, unworthy being in comparison.... I saw her fade rapidly away, beautiful, and more beautiful, and more angelical to the very last.... I was by her when she died.... I was the last one she looked upon." The memorandum from which this extract is taken had been originally written, it appeared, for the eye of an intimate lady-friend abroad, to whom we shall have occasion to refer.
In 1809, at the age of twenty-six, is published his "History of New York." There were a few punctilious Dutch families who were offended at its sallies; but cultivated people generally welcomed its fun, its spirit, its quiet satire, with heartiness and applause.
Shortly after he entered into a commercial partnership with his brothers, Peter and Ebenezer, of whom one was established in England, the other in New York. In the War of 1812 we find him acting as military aid to Governor Tompkins; and in 1815 he embarks again for Europe. He passes many years in England, in the course of which time the commercial firm, of which he is a member goes into bankruptcy. Upon this, he is of course thrown adrift. But through the influence of his friends at home he is offered the position of Chief Clerk of the Navy Department, with a salary of twenty-four hundred dollars a year. This, however, after some misgivings, he declines. He does not like the idea of being cramped by official routine of duty. He will try what he can do with his pen. And for months after making this decision (we have heard it with unction from his own lips) he can do nothing. His friend Allston is going back to America; Leslie is making a reputation; and he, a bankrupt, and having wantonly thrown up the chance for a lucrative position at home, is suddenly bereft of all capacity for literary work; he makes trial; but it is in vain. The "Sketch-Book" is floating in his thought; but he cannot commit its graces to paper.
The months roll on; something must be done; the secretaryship at home is abandoned; he must try again; he does try; he sends off "Sketch-Book No. I." to America. We know what came of it: success, delight. Number upon number followed. There was an early republication, under the author's auspices, in London. He was fêted: it was so odd that an American should write with such control of language, with such a play of fancy, with such pathetic grace. There was a kind of social furor to meet and to see the man who, notwithstanding his Transatlantic birth, had conquered all the witchery of British speech, who knew its possible delicacies of expression, and who graced it with a humor that reminded of Goldsmith.
No American author had ever dreamed of such ovation before: an ovation not due to any incisive thought, not due to any novelty of his subject-matter,—but due to the fact that a man born overseas had suddenly appeared among British writers, who could lay hold upon their own resources of sentiment, and inwrap it in language which charmed them by its grace and provoked them by its purity.
Mr. Murray entered upon the publication of the "Sketch-Book" in 1820, Mr. Irving being at that time thirty-seven years of age. Of his pleasant intimacy with Sir Walter Scott, of his junketings in Paris, of his meeting with Tom Moore, of his unfortunate enlistment in a steamboat-enterprise upon the Seine, there is full and most lively account in the "Life and Letters" before us. "Bracebridge Hall," despatched from Paris in 1822, is received with the same favor which had attended the publication of the "Sketch-Book"; and the pecuniary returns are so liberal that he can lie upon his oars for a while, and (what pleases him more) can effectually aid his brother Peter, who was a party to the unfortunate steamboat-scheme.
After this comes a merry whirl through Europe. The Rhine, Heidelberg, Munich, Vienna, we visit again in his sparkling letters, dated forty odd years ago. His reputation, and the good offices of French and English friends, open an easy path for him; everywhere he finds hospitality and acquaintances, and everywhere, by that frank, genial manner of his, he transmutes even chance acquaintances into confidential friends. The winter of 1822-3 is passed in the delightful city of Dresden. He meets with a warm welcome at the little Saxon court; he has the entrée of a pleasant English household, where he becomes fairly domesticated. Mrs. Foster, its accomplished mistress, is a lady of fortune, who has two "lovely daughters." Mr. Irving, in concert with two or three gentlemen-friends, organizes certain home-theatricals, in which the Misses Foster engage with ready zeal and a charming grace. There are Italian readings, and country-excursions, to all of which Mr. Irving is a delighted party. He hardly knows how to tear himself away from scenes so enchanting. To Miss Foster he writes, on the occasion of a little foray into Bohemia,—"I am almost wishing myself back already. I ought to be off like your bird, but I feel I shall not be able to keep clear of the cage." Mrs. Foster, with a womanly curiosity, is eager to know how a man so susceptible as Mr. Irving, and so domestically inclined, should have reached the mature age of forty as a bachelor. Mr. Irving amiably gratifies her curiosity by detailing to her the story of his early and unfortunate attachment, in the shape of the memorandum to which we have already alluded. He closes this confidential disclosure by saying,—"You wonder why I am not married. I have shown you why I was not long since.... My time has now gone by; and I have growing claims upon my thoughts, and upon my means, slender and precarious as they are. I feel as if I had already a family to think and provide for."
We have dwelt upon this little episode, not because it has any essential importance in itself, but because it has been the subject of a most unseemly interpolation in the British reprint of the biography. Mr. Bentley, "Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty," was, it appears, the purchaser, at a small sum, of the advance-sheets of the book; but, in order to secure English copyright, he conceived the idea of introducing extraneous matter of British origin. In prosecution of this design, he found as collaborateurs the two Misses Foster above alluded to, who are now wives of clergymen of the Church of England. Mrs. Fuller, the elder of the sisters, and the special favorite of the author, gives upon the whole a modest and pleasant account of their association with Mr. Irving, and closes with a few lines which, she says, he wrote in her scrap-book in 1832. "He declared it was impossible for him to be less in a writing-mood." And thereupon follow the well-known lines entitled "Echo and Silence." They certainly do not prove very much for the writing-mood of Mr. Irving,—whatever they may prove for Sir Egerton Brydges. The contribution of the younger sister, Mrs. Flora Dawson, is in a somewhat exaggerated and melodramatic vein, in the course of which she takes occasion to expend a great deal of pity upon "poor Irving," who is made to appear in the character of a rejected suitor for the hand of her sister. It is true that the testimony of Mr. Irving's biographer, and of his private papers, is largely against this absurdly romantic construction; but, although it had been perfectly authentic, it is almost incredible that a lady of delicacy should make such blazon of the affair, for the sake of securing a copyright to "Her Majesty's Publisher in Ordinary." We are sorry that Mrs. Dawson has not made a better début in literature. As for Mr. Bentley, we can characterize his conduct in the matter only by the word—disgraceful. In the whole history of griping literary piracies (of which Americans must bear their share) we can recall no one which shows so bad a taste, and so bad a faith, as this of Mr. Bentley, the "Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty."