The scene at the house of Mr. Hoffman, to which the biographer alludes, took place after Irving's second return from Europe, and after an absence of nearly twenty years from his native land. During this time he had become famous as an author, and had been conceded the position of the first American gentleman in Europe. He had been received at Courts as in his official position (Secretary of Legation) and had received the admiration of the social and intellectual aristocracy of England. Returning full of honors, he became at once the lion of New-York, and was greeted by a public dinner at the City Hotel. How little could it have been imagined, that amid all this harvest of honors, while he stood the cynosure of a general admiration, he should still be under the power of a youthful attachment, and that outliving all the glories of his splendid success, a maiden, dead thirty years, held him with undying power. While others thought him the happy object of a nation's popularity, his heart was stealing away from noise and notice to the hallowed ground where Matilda lay.
'Oh! what are thousand living loves
To that which can not quit the dead?'
The biographer observes that 'it is in the light of this event that we must interpret portions of 'Rural Funerals,' in the Sketch-Book, and 'Saint Mark's Eve,' in Bracebridge Hull.' From the former of these, we therefore make an extract, which is now so powerfully illustrated by the experience of its author:
'The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal; every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open; this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude. Where is the mother that would willingly forget the infant that perished like a blossom from her arms, though every recollection is a pang? Where is the child that would willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to remember be but to lament? Who in the hour of agony would forget the friend over whom he mourns? Who, when the tomb is closing upon the remains of her he most loved, when he feels his heart, as it were, crushed, in the closing of its portal, would accept of consolation that must be bought by forgetfulness? No; the love that survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection; when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved is softened away into pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness, who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of gayety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would exchange it even for the song of pleasure or the burst of revelry? No; there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song; there is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living.... But the grave of those we love, what a place for meditation! There it is that we call up in long review the whole history of virtue and goodness, and the thousand endearments lavished upon us almost unheeded in the daily intercourse of intimacy; there it is that we dwell upon the tenderness, the solemn, awful tenderness of the dying scene. The bed of death, with all its stifled griefs, its noiseless attendance, its mute, watchful assiduities. The last testimonies of expiring love! The feeble, fluttering, thrilling—oh! how thrilling—pressure of the hand! The last fond look of the glazing eye turned upon us even from the threshold of existence! The faint, faltering accents struggling in death to give one more assurance of affection!'
How truly is this passage 'to be interpreted in the light of the event in Irving's history', when it is evident from a comparison of it with the memoranda, that it is a sketch of that scene which wrecked his brightest hopes, and that here he is renewing in this unequaled description of a dying-bed, the last hours of Matilda Hoffman. The highly-wrought picture presents a complete detail to the eye, and yet still more powerful is that simple utterance in the memoranda: 'I was the last one she looked upon.'
St. Mark's Eve,' to which reference is also made, was written several years subsequently, and as may be gathered from its tone, under circumstances of peculiar loneliness. It was while a solitary occupant of his lodgings, a stranger in a foreign city, that he felt the inspiration of precious memories, and improved his lonely hours by this exquisite production. 'I am alone,' he writes, 'in my chamber; but these themes have taken such hold upon me that I can not sleep. The room in which I sit is just fitted to foster such a state of mind. The walls are hung with tapestry, the figures of which are faded and look like unsubstantial shapes melting away from sight.... The murmur of voices and the peal of remote laughter no longer reach the ear. The clock from the church, in which so many of the former inhabitants of this house lie buried, has chimed the awful hour of midnight.' It was a fitting time to yield to the power of that undying affection which abode with him under all changes, and the serene presence of one snatched from him years ago must at such times have invested him as with a spell. Thus he writes:
'Even the doctrines of departed spirits returning to visit the scenes and beings which were dear to them during the body's existence, though it has been debased by the absurd superstitions of the vulgar, in itself is awfully solemn and sublime.... Raise it above the frivolous purposes to which it has been applied; strip it of the gloom and horror with which it has been surrounded; and there is none of the whole circle of visionary creeds that could more delightfully elevate the imagination or more tenderly affect the heart.... What could be more consoling than the idea that the souls of those we once loved were permitted to return and watch over our welfare?—that affectionate and guardian spirits sat by our pillows while we slept, keeping a vigil over our most helpless hours?—that beauty and innocence which had languished in the tomb yet smiled unseen around us, revealing themselves in those blest dreams wherein they live over again the hours of past endearments?.... There are departed beings that I have loved as I never shall love again in this world—that have loved me as I never again shall be loved. If such beings do ever retain in their blessed spheres the attachments they felt on earth; if they take an interest in the poor concerns of transient mortality, and are permitted to hold communion with those they have loved on earth, I feel as if now, at this deep hour of night, in this silence and solitude, I could receive their visitation with the most solemn but unalloyed delight.'
The use of the plural in the above extract obviated that publicity of his especial bereavement which would have arisen from a reference to one, and it is to be explained by the deaths of three persons to whom he sustained the most endearing though varied relations of which man is capable: his mother, his sister Nancy, and his betrothed. The first two had become sacred memories, and were enshrined in the sanctuary of his soul; but the latter was a thing of life, whose existence had become identified with his own, and was made sure beyond the power of disease and mortality. Who, indeed, would have been so welcome to the solitary tourist on that weird midnight as she whose Bible and Prayer-Book accompanied his wanderings, whose miniature was his treasure, and of whom he could say: 'She died in the beauty of her youth, and in my memory she will ever be young and beautiful.'
That a reünion with all the beloved of earth was a controlling thought in his mind, and one bearing an especial reference to this supreme bereavement, is manifest from the following, from the same sketch:
'We take each other by the hand, and we exchange a few words and looks of kindness, and we rejoice together for a few moments, and then days, months, years intervene, and we see and know nothing of each other. Or granting that we dwell together for the full season of this mortal life, the grave soon closes its gates between us, and then our spirits are doomed to remain in separation and widowhood until they meet again in that more perfect state of being, where soul will dwell with soul in blissful communion, and there will be neither death, nor absence, nor any thing else to interrupt our felicity.'