Mr.Irving described to me, with that humor and good-humor which he always kept, how, amongst other visitors, a member of the British press who had carried his distinguished pen to America (where he employed it in vilifying his own country) came to Sunnyside, introduced himself to Irving, partook of his wine and luncheon, and in two days described Mr.Irving, his house, his nieces, his meal, and his manner of dozing afterwards, in a New York paper.On another occasion, Irving said, laughing, "Two persons came to me, and one held me in conversation whilst the other miscreant took my portrait!"And how came it that this house was so small, when Mr.Irving's books were sold by hundreds of thousands, nay, millions, when his profits were known to be large, and the habits of life of the good old bachelor were notoriously modest and ******? He had loved once in his life.The lady he loved died; and he, whom all the world loved, never sought to replace her.I can't say how much the thought of that fidelity has touched me.Does not the very cheerfulness of his after life add to the pathos of that untold story? To grieve always was not in his nature; or, when he had his sorrow, to bring all the world in to condole with him and bemoan it.
Deep and quiet he lays the love of his heart, and buries it; and grass and flowers grow over the scarred ground in due time.
Irving had such a small house and such narrow rooms, because there was a great number of people to occupy them.He could only afford to keep one old horse (which, lazy and aged as it was, managed once or twice to run away with that careless old horseman).He could only afford to give plain sherry to that amiable British paragraph-monger from New York, who saw the patriarch asleep over his modest, blameless cup, and fetched the public into his private chamber to look at him.Irving could only live very modestly, because the wifeless, childless man had a number of children to whom he was as a father.He had as many as nine nieces, I am told--I saw two of these ladies at his house--with all of whom the dear old man had shared the produce of his labor and genius.
"Be a good man, my dear." One can't but think of these last words of the veteran Chief of Letters, who had tasted and tested the value of worldly success, admiration, prosperity.Was Irving not good, and, of his works, was not his life the best part? In his family, gentle, generous, good-humored, affectionate, self-denying: in society, a delightful example of complete gentlemanhood; quite unspoiled by prosperity; never obsequious to the great (or, worse still, to the base and mean, as some public men are forced to be in his and other countries) eager to acknowledge every contemporary's merit; always kind and affable to the young members of his calling;in his professional bargains and mercantile dealings delicately honest and grateful; one of the most charming masters of our lighter language; the constant friend to us and our nation; to men of letters doubly dear, not for his wit and genius merely, but as an exemplar of goodness, probity, and pure life:--I don't know what sort of testimonial will be raised to him in his own country, where generous and enthusiastic acknowledgment of American merit is never wanting: but Irving was in our service as well as theirs; and as they have placed a stone at Greenwich yonder in memory of that gallant young Bellot, who shared the perils and fate of some of our Arctic seamen, I would like to hear of some memorial raised by English writers and friends of letters in affectionate remembrance of the dear and good Washington Irving.
As for the other writer, whose departure many friends, some few most dearly-loved relatives, and multitudes of admiring readers deplore, our republic has already decreed his statue, and he must have known that he had earned this posthumous honor.He is not a poet and man of letters merely, but citizen, statesman, a great British worthy.
Almost from the first moment when he appears, amongst boys, amongst college students, amongst men, he is marked, and takes rank as a great Englishman.All sorts of successes are easy to him: as a lad he goes down into the arena with others, and wins all the prizes to which he has a mind.A place in the senate is straightway offered to the young man.He takes his seat there; he speaks, when so minded, without party anger or intrigue, but not without party faith and a sort of heroic enthusiasm for his cause.Still he is poet and philosopher even more than orator.That he may have leisure and means to pursue his darling studies, he absents himself for a while, and accepts a richly-remunerative post in the East.As learned a man may live in a cottage or a college common-room; but it always seemed to me that ample means and recognized rank were Macaulay's as of right.Years ago there was a wretched outcry raised because Mr.
Macaulay dated a letter from Windsor Castle, where he was staying.
Immortal gods! Was this man not a fit guest for any palace in the world? or a fit companion for any man or woman in it? I dare say, after Austerlitz, the old K.K.court officials and footmen sneered at Napoleon for dating from Schonbrunn.But that miserable "Windsor Castle" outcry is an echo out of fast-retreating old-world remembrances.The place of such a natural chief was amongst the first of the land; and that country is best, according to our British notion at least, where the man of eminence has the best chance of investing his genius and intellect.