Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Writings (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

in my mind that made me fear to be alone—I had often to get up in the night & seek the bedroom of my brother, as if having a human being by me would relieve me of the frightful gloom of my thoughts (Williams, vol. 2, pp. 257-258).
    He found solace in working on A History, spending long days in the libraries of New York and Philadelphia. The source material he gleaned from European travel narratives and early colonial histories would give his manuscript a verisimilitude that added to its popularity.
    This air of realism was heightened by a promotional stunt Irving pulled off with the help of Henry Brevoort and James Kirke Paulding. In the weeks prior to publication, he published a report in the New York Evening Post that an elderly gentleman by the name of Knickerbocker had wandered off from his lodgings without paying his rent, leaving behind only a collection of papers in manuscript. In a subsequent issue, a letter to the editor reported that a gentleman matching Knickerbocker’s description had been seen in the Hudson River Valley, walking north toward Albany. A week and a half later, under the pseudonym “Seth Handaside, Landlord of the Independent Columbian Hotel,” Irving announced that the manuscript Knickerbocker left behind was to be published in order to “pay off his bill for boarding and lodging” (p. 374). This hoax was remarkably successful, so much so that for a time Irving’s narrator gained greater notoriety than the author himself. The historical accuracy of his narrative of New York’s history as the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam made his mock-heroic epic more than a Swiftean satire. It provided the newly formed nation with a basis for history that was free of associations with British colonial rule. In so doing, A History anticipates on a grand scale the historical displacement that is a central theme of Irving’s better-known story, “Rip Van Winkle.”
    America’s need to declare its cultural independence from Britain intensified in the decade following the War of 1812. In August 1814, after the British burned Washington, D.C., Irving enlisted. He served as aide-de-camp to New York’s Governor Daniel Tompkins, but the war was in its final stages and he never saw action. However, he did gain experience in politics and diplomacy that served him well later in life (he was appointed secretary to the American legation in London in 1829, and minister to Spain in 1842). Unfortunately, his political talents could not help save the family importing business. P. & E. Irving foundered after the war, largely due to Peter Irving’s mismanagement of purchasing in Liverpool. The demand for imported goods had evaporated as public sentiment became decidedly anti-British and manufacturing increased in the mid-Atlantic region. Irving sailed to Liverpool in June 1815 intending to travel through England and Europe for a second time, but he found himself caught up in the financial collapse of the firm. He remembered this period as one of the darkest of his life.
    This new calamity seemed more intolerable even than [Matilda’s death]. That was solemn and sanctifying, it seemed while it prostrated my spirits, to purify & elevate my soul. But this was vile and sordid and humiliated me to the dust.... I lost all appetite, I scarcely slept—I went to my bed every night as to a grave (Williams, vol. 2, p. 259).
    To drive off his despondency, Irving again turned to writing. He had the good fortune to meet up with Washington Allston who, along with his fellow American artist Charles Leslie, had been commissioned to illustrate a British edition of A History. Irving became their regular companion, and they encouraged him to pursue the literary “sketches” he had begun to write. To gain some relief from the anxieties of impending bankruptcy, he traveled to Scotland and met Sir Walter Scott, whom he had long admired. Scott invited Irving to spend a few days with him at Abbotsford, and this visit had a decisive influence