'This passion was terribly against my studies. I felt my own deficiency, and despaired of ever succeeding at the bar. I could study any thing else rather than law, and had a fatal propensity to belles-lettres. I had gone on blindly like a boy in love, but now I began to open my eyes and be miserable. I had nothing in purse or in expectation. I anticipated nothing from my legal pursuits, and had done nothing to make me hope for public employment, or political elevation. I had begun a satirical and humorous work, (The History of New-York,) in company with one of my brothers; but he had gone to Europe shortly after commencing it, and my feelings had run in so different a vein that I could not go on with it. I became low-spirited and disheartened, and did not know what was to become of me. I made frequent attempts to apply myself to the law; but it is a slow and tedious undertaking for a young man to get into practice, and I had, unluckily, no turn for business. The gentleman with whom I studied saw the state of my mind. He had an affectionate regard for me—a paternal one, I may say. He had a better opinion of my legal capacity than it merited. He urged me to return to my studies, to apply myself, to become well acquainted with the law, and that in case I could make myself capable of undertaking legal concerns, he would take me into partnership with him and give me his daughter. Nothing could be more generous. I set to work with zeal to study anew, and I considered myself bound in honor not to make farther advances with the daughter until I should feel satisfied with my proficiency with the law. It was all in vain. I had an insuperable repugnance to the study; my mind would not take hold of it; or rather, by long despondency had become for the time incapable of any application. I was in a wretched state of doubt and self-distrust. I tried to finish the work which I was secretly writing, hoping it would give me reputation and gain me some public employment. In the mean time I saw Matilda every day, and that helped distract me. In the midst of this struggle and anxiety, she was taken ill with a cold. Nothing was thought of it at first, but she grew rapidly worse, and fell into a consumption. I can not tell you what I suffered. The ills that I have undergone in this life have been dealt out to me drop by drop, and I have tasted all their bitterness. I saw her fade rapidly away—beautiful and more beautiful, and more angelic to the very last. I was often by her bedside, and in her wandering state of mind she would talk to me with a sweet, natural, and affecting eloquence that was overpowering. I saw more of the beauty of her mind in that delirious state than I had ever known before. Her malady was rapid in its career, and hurried her off in two months. Her dying-struggles were painful and protracted. For three days and nights I did not leave the house, and scarcely slept. I was by her when she died. All the family were assembled around her, some praying, others weeping, for she was adored by them all. I was the last one she looked upon. I have told you as briefly as I could, what, if I were to tell with all the incidents and feelings that accompanied it, would fill volumes. She was but seventeen years old when she died.
'I can not tell you what a horrid state of mind I was in for a long time. I seemed to care for nothing; the world was a blank to me. I abandoned all thoughts of the law. I went into the country, but could not bear solitude, yet could not enjoy society. There was a dismal horror continually on my mind that made me fear to be alone. I had often to get up in the night and seek the bedroom of my brother, as if the having of a human being by me would relieve me from the frightful gloom of my own thoughts.
'Months elapsed before my mind would resume any tone, but the despondency I had suffered for a long time in the course of this attachment, and the anguish that attended its final catastrophe, seemed to give a turn to my whole character, and threw some clouds into my disposition, which have ever since hung about it. When I became more calm and collected, I applied myself, by way of occupation, to the finishing of my work. I brought it to a close as well as I could, and published it; but the time and circumstances in which it was produced rendered me always unable to look upon it with satisfaction. Still, it took with the public, and gave me celebrity, as an original work was something remarkable and uncommon in America. I was noticed, caressed, and for a time elevated by the popularity I had gained. Wherever I went, I was overwhelmed with attentions. I was full of youth and animation, far different from the being I now am, and I was quite flushed with this early taste of public favor. Still, however, the career of gayety and notoriety soon palled upon me. I seemed to drift about without aim or object, at the mercy of every breeze; my heart wanted anchorage. I was naturally susceptible, and tried to form other attachments, but my heart would not hold on. It would continually revert to what it had lost; and whenever there was a pause in the hurry of novelty and excitement, I would sink into dismal dejection. For years I could not talk on the subject of this hopeless regret; I could not even mention her name; but her image was continually before me, and I dreamed of her incessantly.'
The fragment of which the above is an extract, is doubly interesting as not only clearing up a mystery which the world has long desired to penetrate, but also as giving Irving's experience in his own words. It proves how deeply he felt the pangs of a rooted sorrow, and how impossible it was, amid all the attractions of society, for him to escape the power of one who had bidden to all earthly societies an everlasting farewell. That his regrets over his early bereavement did not arise from overwrought dreams of excellence in the departed, is evident from the character she bore with others; and this is illustrated by the following extract from a faded copy of the Commercial Advertiser, which reads as follows:
'OBITUARY,
'Died, on the 26th instant, in the eighteenth year of her age, Miss Sarah Matilda Hoffman, daughter of Josiah Ogden Hoffman. Thus another youthful and lovely victim is added to the ravages of that relentless and invincible enemy to earthly happiness, the consumption. In the month of January we beheld this amiable and interesting girl in the glow of health and spirits, the delight of her friends, the joy and pride of her family; she is now cold and lifeless as the clod of the valley. So falls the tender flower of spring as it expands its bosom to the chilling blight of the morning frost. Endowed by nature with a mind unusually discriminating, and a docility of temper and disposition admirably calculated to reap profit from instruction, Miss Hoffman very early became an object of anxious care and solicitude to the fondest of fathers. That care and solicitude he soon found richly rewarded by the progress she made in her learning, and by every evidence of a grateful and feeling heart. After completing the course of her education in a highly respectable seminary in Philadelphia, she returned to her father's house, where she diligently sought every opportunity to improve her mind by various and useful reading. She charmed the circle of her friends by the suavity of her disposition and the most gentle and engaging manners. She delighted and blessed her own family by her uniformly correct and Though not formed to mingle and shine in the noisy haunts of dissipation, she was eminently fitted to increase the store of domestic happiness, to bring pleasure and tranquillity to the fireside, and to gladden the fond heart of a parent.
'Religion, so necessary to our peace in this world and to our happiness in the next, and which gives so high a lustre to the charms and to the virtues of woman, constantly shed her benign influence over the conduct of Miss Hoffman, nor could the insidious attempts of the infidel for a moment weaken her confidence in its heavenly doctrines. With a form rather slender and fragile was united a beauty of face, which, though not dazzling, had so much softness, such a touching sweetness in it, that the expression which mantled over her features was in a high degree lovely and interesting. Her countenance was indeed the faithful image of a mind that was purity itself, and of a heart where compassion and goodness had fixed their abode. To the sweetest disposition that ever graced a woman, was joined a sensibility, not the fictitious creature of the imagination, but the glowing offspring of a pure and affectionate soul.
'Tenderness, that quality of the heart which gives such a charm to every female virtue, was hers in an eminent degree. It diffused itself over every action of her life. Sometimes blended with a delicate and happy humor, characteristic of her nature, it would delight the social circle; again, with the most assiduous offices of affection, it would show itself at the sick couch of a parent, a relative, or a friend. In this manner the writer of this brief memorial witnessed those soothing acts of kindness which, under peculiar circumstances, will ever be dear to his memory. Alas! little did she then dream that in one short year she herself would fall a sacrifice to the same disease under which the friend to whom she so kindly ministered, sunk to the grave.'
This testimony to departed worth bears the impress of deep sincerity, and its freedom from the fulsome praise, which so often varnishes the dead, seems to add to its force. Peter Irving, also, pays a tribute to her character in the following utterance, in a letter to his bereaved brother: 'May her gentle spirit have found that heaven to which it ever seemed to appertain. She was too spotless for this contaminated world.'
The biographer states that 'Mr. Irving never alluded to this event, nor did any of his relatives ever venture in his presence to introduce the name of Matilda,' 'I have heard,' he adds, 'of but one instance in which it was ever obtruded upon him, and that was by her father, nearly thirty years after her death, and at his own house. A granddaughter had been requested to play for him some favorite piece on the piano, and in extricating her music from the drawer, she accidentally brought forth a piece of embroidery with it. 'Washington,' said Mr. Hoffman, picking up the faded relic, 'this is a piece of poor Matilda's workmanship.' The effect was electric. He had been conversing in the sprightliest mood before, but he sunk at once into utter silence, and in a few moments got up and left the house. It is evidence with what romantic tenderness Irving cherished the memory of this early love, that he kept by him through life the Bible and Prayer-Book of Matilda. He lay with them under his pillow in the first days of keen and vivid anguish that followed her loss, and they were ever afterward, in all changes of climate and country, his inseparable companions.'