Brian Jay Jones - Washington Irving: The Definitive Biography of America’s First Bestselling Author

Washington

Irving

Washington

Irving

THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY OF
AMERICA'S FIRST BESTSELLING AUTHOR

BRIAN JAY JONES

Copyright 2008, 2011 by Brian Jay Jones

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-61145-354-6

Printed in the United States of America

For Barb,
who told me I could,
and Madison,
who wants to

Washington Irving was an American original. His life story is the kind on which America was built and thrives: a likable, average man does something no one has ever done before and becomes very, very famous. So famous that women swoon over him and adoring fans hang his picture on their walls. Newspapers track his every move. Politicians want to be associated with him. It's a story you might think you've read and heard countless times before, but this one is differ-entbecause it's the first.

The first American to earn a living by his pen, Washington Irving was America's first bona fide best-selling author. Unlike writers before him, he had no family wealth or personal estate to sustain him if he simply dabbled or wrote for pleasure. Irving had to write for a living. And write he did, churning out books, reviews, and articles for six decades, working with such regularity that he was sometimes accused of bookmaking. Like many of today's best-selling authors, who publish books readers love but critics loathe, Irving wrote for the mass-esand for profit, not for posterity. The fact that his work sold so well and so quickly surprised even him.

Consequently, Irving was the nation's first international super-star, even in the most modern sense of the word. He had talent, movie-star good looks, and a charm that endeared him to his audience. He was a friend to presidents and kings, artists and poets; admirers begged for his autograph or a piece of his blotting paper, while writers sought an encouraging word. Were he alive today, he would be a staple of gossip magazines and tabloids, as he frequented plays and operas, and danced and drank with the glitterati.

For all his success, Irving was a man in perpetual crisisand here, too, he was an American original, frequently engaging in damage control to protect a carefully cultivated reputation. While the public saw a wealthy, eligible bachelor and gentleman, Irving's private life was often in shambles. Money was a constant concern, as irresponsible family members lost his earnings in a variety of poor investments and ill-advised schemes. He fretted over his health, and suffered from a herpetic condition that periodically laid him up for months. He struggled with writer's block, feuded with publishers, and sulked over criticism. Frustrated in matters of the heart, he never married and was, in all likelihood, a homosexual.

More than anything, Irving wanted to be loved by readers, cherished by friends and family, and successful in his chosen profession. And while his writing is an important part of his life story, it is only a piece of a larger and more complex portrait. Until now, Irving's body of work has always been better known than the man. A few of his stories and characters are so deeply ingrained in our culture that most people can relate the plot of Rip Van Winkle or The Legend of Sleepy Hollow without ever having read the original stories. Yet even those who have read the stories can rarely identify their author.

This new biography attempts to shift the focus from Irving's writings to Irving the writer. For this reason, I have deliberately left literary criticism and analysis of his oeuvre in the capable hands of others. Instead, this is the story of the man behind those stories. And what a character he is! Far more intriguing than any one of his literary creations. The Washington Irving in these pages is complicated and conflicted. He is the talented, charming, and easygoing man of letters he projected to the publicbut he is also the privately petty, jealous, and lazy malcontent. That conflict was part of his considerable charm.

An elegant writer in print, Irving was a terrible speller. His letters are a mishmash of misspelled words and poor grammar, and his personal journals, which he believed no one else would read, were even worse. For the most part, I have chosen to leave his words and syntax intact, even in the endnotes, stepping in only when grammar or punctuation interfered with clarity. The words and sentiments, the very story, are Irving's ownthe story of an American original.

Washington

Irving

My beloved island of Manna-hata!

Washington Irving, A History of New York, 1809

W ASHINGTON IRVING WAS A DUNCE.

That was the unfortunate assessment of Mrs. Ann Kil-master, his kindergarten teacher, in 1789. Every day six-year-old Washington Irving was marched from his family's home on William Street around the corner to Mrs. Kilmaster's classroom on Ann Street in New York City. William and Sarah Irving hoped their youngest child would learn to read and perhaps begin to write under Kilmaster's watchful eye, but the young charge only exasperated his instructor.

As disappointed as Mrs. Kilmaster was, her frustration didn't begin to compare with the wrath of Washington's father. Zealous, hardworking, and utterly humorless, William Irvingthe Deacon, as he was knownlorded it over his family of five sons and three daughters ranging in age from twenty-three-year-old William Jr. to six-year-old Washington. A strict Presbyterian, the Deacon tolerated neither idleness nor stupidity.

Born of solid Scotch stock in the Orkney Islands in 1731, the Deacon had initially earned his living at sea, working on an armed packet in the service of Great Britain. While running slants between England and New York, petty officer Irving met Sarah Sanders, the

By the time of the American Revolution, the Irvings had five children and a moderately successful business dealing mainly in wine, sugar, hardware, and auctioneering. The Deacon and his wife were staunch patriots, and British occupation during the war made New York an increasingly dangerous place for the Irving family. Concerned for their safety, the Irvings fled across the Hudson River to Rahway, New Jersey, and were fired on by British troops. As the war wound down, the family returned to a battle-scarred New York to reestablish the family business. By mid-1782, Sarah Irving was pregnant with their eighth child.

On the evening of April 3, 1783the same week New Yorkers learned of the British ceasefire that effectively ended the Revolutionary WarWashington Irving was born in Manhattan. There had never been any doubt as to the child's first name. Washington's work is ended, Sarah Irving said to her husband, speaking reverently of the hero of the American Revolution, and the child shall be named after him.