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Page 28
This from Miss Emily Foster, who elsewhere notes his kindliness in
observing life:--
"Some persons, in looking upon life, view it as they would view a
picture, with a stern and criticising eye. He also looks upon life
as a picture, but to catch its beauties, its lights,--not its
defects and shadows. On the former he loves to dwell. He has a
wonderful knack at shutting his eyes to the sinister side of
anything. Never beat a more kindly heart than his; alive to the
sorrows, but not to the faults, of his friends, but doubly alive to
their virtues and goodness. Indeed, people seemed to grow more good
with one so unselfish and so gentle."
In London, some years later:--
"He was still the same; time changed him very little. His
conversation was as interesting as ever [he was always an excellent
relater]; his dark gray eyes still full of varying feeling; his
smile half playful, half melancholy, but ever kind. All that was
mean, or envious, or harsh, he seemed to turn from so completely
that, when with him, it seemed that such things were not. All
gentle and tender affections, Nature in her sweetest or grandest
moods, pervaded his whole imagination, and left no place for low or
evil thoughts; and when in good spirits, his humor, his droll
descriptions, and his fun would make the gravest or the saddest
laugh."
As to Irving's "state of mind" in Dresden, it is pertinent to quote a
passage from what we gather to be a journal kept by Miss Flora Foster:--
"He has written. He has confessed to my mother, as to a true and
dear friend, his love for E----, and his conviction of its utter
hopelessness. He feels himself unable to combat it. He thinks he
must try, by absence, to bring more peace to his mind. Yet he
cannot bear to give up our friendship,--an intercourse become so
dear to him, and so necessary to his daily happiness. Poor Irving!"
It is well for our peace of mind that we do not know what is going down
concerning us in "journals." On his way to the Herrnhuthers, Mr. Irving
wrote to Mrs. Foster:--
"When I consider how I have trifled with my time, suffered painful
vicissitudes of feeling, which for a time damaged both mind and
body,--when I consider all this, I reproach myself that I did not
listen to the first impulse of my mind, and abandon Dresden long
since. And yet I think of returning! Why should I come back to
Dresden? The very inclination that dooms me thither should furnish
reasons for my staying away."
In this mood, the Herrnhuthers, in their right-angled, whitewashed
world, were little attractive.
"If the Herrnhuthers were right in their notions, the world would
have been laid out in squares and angles and right lines, and
everything would have been white and black and snuff-color, as they
have been clipped by these merciless retrenchers of beauty and
enjoyment. And then their dormitories! Think of between one and two
hundred of these simple gentlemen cooped up at night in one great
chamber! What a concert of barrel-organs in this great resounding
saloon! And then their plan of marriage! The very birds of the air
choose their mates from preference and inclination; but this
detestable system of _lot_! The sentiment of love may be, and is,
in a great measure, a fostered growth of poetry and romance, and
balderdashed with false sentiment; but with all its vitiations, it
is the beauty and the charm, the flavor and the fragrance, of all
intercourse between man and woman; it is the rosy cloud in the
morning of life; and if it does too often resolve itself into the
shower, yet, to my mind, it only makes our nature more fruitful in
what is excellent and amiable."
Better suited him Prague, which is certainly a part of the "naughty
world" that Irving preferred:--
"Old Prague still keeps up its warrior look, and swaggers about
with its rusty corselet and helm, though both sadly battered. There
seems to me to be an air of style and fashion about the first
people of Prague, and a good deal of beauty in the fashionable
circle. This, perhaps, is owing to my contemplating it from a
distance, and my imagination lending it tints occasionally. Both
actors and audience, contemplated from the pit of a theatre, look
better than when seen in the boxes and behind the scenes. I like to
contemplate society in this way occasionally, and to dress it up by
the help of fancy, to my own taste. When I get in the midst of it,
it is too apt to lose its charm, and then there is the trouble and
_ennui_ of being obliged to take an active part in the farce; but
to be a mere spectator is amusing. I am glad, therefore, that I
brought no letters to Prague. I shall leave it with a favorable
idea of its society and manners, from knowing nothing accurate of
either; and with a firm belief that every pretty woman I have seen
is an angel, as I am apt to think every pretty woman, until I have
found her out."
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