|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 23
It was at the same resort of fashion and disease that Irving observed a
phenomenon upon which Brevoort had commented as beginning to be
noticeable in America.
"Your account [he writes] of the brevity of the old lady's nether
garments distresses me.... I cannot help observing that this
fashion of short skirts must have been invented by the French
ladies as a complete trick upon John Bull's 'woman-folk.' It was
introduced just at the time the English flocked in such crowds to
Paris. The French women, you know, are remarkable for pretty feet
and ankles, and can display them in perfect security. The English
are remarkable for the contrary. Seeing the proneness of the
English women to follow French fashions, they therefore led them
into this disastrous one, and sent them home with their petticoats
up to their knees, exhibiting such a variety of sturdy little legs
as would have afforded Hogarth an ample choice to match one of his
assemblages of queer heads. It is really a great source of
curiosity and amusement on the promenade of a watering-place to
observe the little sturdy English women, trudging about in their
stout leather shoes, and to study the various 'understandings'
betrayed to view by this mischievous fashion."
The years passed rather wearily in England. Peter continued to be an
invalid, and Washington himself, never robust, felt the pressure more
and more of the irksome and unprosperous business affairs. Of his own
want of health, however, he never complains; he maintains a patient
spirit in the ill turns of fortune, and his impatience in the business
complications is that of a man hindered from his proper career. The
times were depressing.
"In America [he writes to Brevoort] you have financial
difficulties, the embarrassments of trade, the distress of
merchants, but here you have what is far worse, the distress of the
poor--not merely mental sufferings, but the absolute miseries of
nature: hunger, nakedness, wretchedness of all kinds that the
laboring people in this country are liable to. In the best of times
they do but subsist, but in adverse times they starve. How the
country is to extricate itself from its present embarrassment, how
it is to escape from the poverty that seems to be overwhelming it,
and how the government is to quiet the multitudes that are already
turbulent and clamorous, and are yet but in the beginning of their
real miseries, I cannot conceive."
The embarrassments of the agricultural and laboring classes and of the
government were as serious in 1816 as they have again become in 1881.
During 1817 Irving was mostly in the depths of gloom, a prey to the
monotony of life and torpidity of intellect. Rays of sunlight pierce the
clouds occasionally. The Van Wart household at Birmingham was a frequent
refuge for him, and we have pretty pictures of the domestic life there;
glimpses of Old Parr, whose reputation as a gourmand was only second to
his fame as a Grecian, and of that delightful genius, the Rev. Rann
Kennedy, who might have been famous if he had ever committed to paper
the long poems that he carried about in his head, and the engaging sight
of Irving playing the flute for the little Van Warts to dance. During
the holidays Irving paid another visit to the haunts of Isaac Walton,
and his description of the adventures and mishaps of a pleasure party
on the banks of the Dove suggest that the incorrigible bachelor was
still sensitive to the allurements of life, and liable to wander over
the "dead-line" of matrimonial danger. He confesses that he was all day
in Elysium. "When we had descended from the last precipice," he says,
"and come to where the Dove flowed musically through a verdant
meadow--then--fancy me, oh, thou 'sweetest of poets,' wandering by the
course of this romantic stream--a lovely girl hanging on my arm,
pointing out the beauties of the surrounding scenery, and repeating in
the most dulcet voice tracts of heaven-born poetry. If a strawberry
smothered in cream has any consciousness of its delicious situation, it
must feel as I felt at that moment." Indeed, the letters of this doleful
year are enlivened by so many references to the graces and attractions
of lovely women, seen and remembered, that insensibility cannot be
attributed to the author of the "Sketch-Book."
The death of Irving's mother in the spring of 1817 determined him to
remain another year abroad. Business did not improve. His
brother-in-law Van Wart called a meeting of his creditors, the Irving
brothers floundered on into greater depths of embarrassment, and
Washington, who could not think of returning home to face poverty in New
York, began to revolve a plan that would give him a scanty but
sufficient support. The idea of the "Sketch-Book" was in his mind. He
had as yet made few literary acquaintances in England. It is an
illustration of the warping effect of friendship upon the critical
faculty that his opinion of Moore at this time was totally changed by
subsequent intimacy. At a later date the two authors became warm friends
and mutual admirers of each other's productions. In June, 1817, "Lalla
Rookh" was just from the press, and Irving writes to Brevoort: "Moore's
new poem is just out. I have not sent it to you, for it is dear and
worthless. It is written in the most effeminate taste, and fit only to
delight boarding-school girls and lads of nineteen just in their first
loves. Moore should have kept to songs and epigrammatic conceits. His
stream of intellect is too small to bear expansion--it spreads into
mere surface." Too much cream for the strawberry!
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|