Quote of the Day (Washington Irving, With a Colonial New Yorker Anticipating the Presidential Executive Order)

“No sooner had this bustling little man [Governor Wilhelmus Kieft, or “William the Testy”] been blown by a whiff of fortune into the seat of government, than he called together his council, and delivered a very animated speech on the affairs of the province…. [E]verybody knows what a glorious opportunity a governor, a president, or even an emperor has of drubbing his enemies in his speeches, messages, and bulletins, where he has the talk all on his own side…[H]e at length came to the less important part of his speech, the situation of the province; and here he soon worked himself into a fearful rage against the Yankees, whom he compared to the Gauls who desolated Rome, and the Goths and Vandals who overran the fairest plains of Europe—nor did he forget to mention, in terms of adequate opprobrium, the insolence with which they had encroached upon the territories of New Netherlands, and the unparalleled audacity with which they had commenced the town of New-Plymouth, and planted the onion patches of Weathersfield under the very walls of Fort Good Hope. Having thus artfully wrought up his tale of terror to a climax, he assumed a self-satisfied look, and declared, with a nod of knowing import, that he had taken measures to put a final stop to these encroachments—that he had been obliged to have recourse to a dreadful engine of warfare, lately invented, awful in its effects, but authorized by direful necessity. In a word, he was resolved to conquer the Yankees—by proclamation.”— American fiction writer, biographer and diplomat Washington Irving (1783-1859), A Knickerbocker's History of New York (1809)

Quote of the Day (Washington Irving, on Ichabod Crane)

“The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.” — American fiction writer, biographer and diplomat Washington Irving (1783-1859), “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” in The Complete Tales of Washington Irving, edited by Charles Neider (1975)

The image accompanying this post shows Will Rogers as Ichabod Crane and Lois Meredith as Katrina Van Tassel, in the 1922 silent film The Headless Horseman.

At five feet 11 inches, Rogers was not the beanpole imagined by Irving. But the lovable humorist was already well launched on a career that would make him one of Hollywood’s most highly paid stars before dying in a plane crash in 1935, so that made him a box-office draw.

Quote of the Day (Washington Irving, on a Man Who Became a ‘Matrimonial Victim’)

“My aunt was a lady of large frame, strong mind, and great resolution; she was what might be termed a very manly woman. My uncle was a thin, puny little man, very meek and acquiescent, and no match for my aunt. It was observed that he dwindled and dwindled gradually away, from the day of his marriage. His wife’s powerful mind was too much for him; it wore him out. My aunt, however, took all possible care of him, had half the doctors in town to prescribe for him, made him take all their prescriptions, willy nilly, and dosed him with physic enough to cure a whole hospital. All was in vain. My uncle grew worse and worse the more dosing and nursing he underwent, until in the end he added another to the long list of matrimonial victims, who have been killed with kindness.” — American fiction writer, biographer and diplomat Washington Irving (1783-1859), “The Adventure of My Aunt,” in The Complete Tales of Washington Irving, edited by Charles Neider (1975)

Quote of the Day (Washington Irving, on Misfortune’s Different Effect on Little and Great Minds)

“Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.” ―American fiction writer, biographer and diplomat Washington Irving (1783-1859), “Philip of Pokanoket: An Indian Memoir," in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1818)

Quote of the Day (Washington Irving, on Two MIGHTY Ugly Dogs)

“She [Lady Lillycraft] has brought two dogs with her, also, out of a number of pets which she maintains at home. One is a fat spaniel called Zephyr—though heaven defend me from such a zephyr! He is fed out of all shape and comfort; his eyes are nearly strained out of his head; he wheezes with corpulency, and cannot walk without great difficulty. The other is a little, old, gray muzzled curmudgeon, with an unhappy eye, that kindles like a coal if you only look at him; his nose turns up; his mouth is drawn into wrinkles, so as to show his teeth; in short, he has altogether the look of a dog far gone in misanthropy, and totally sick of the world. When he walks, he has his tail curled up so tight that it seems to lift his feet from the ground; and he seldom makes use of more than three legs at a time, keeping the other drawn up as a reserve. This last wretch is called Beauty.”—American man of letters and diplomat Washington Irving (1783-1859), “The Widow's Retinue,” in Bracebridge Hall (1822)

Appreciations: Washington Irving’s ‘The Devil and Tom Walker’

“At this propitious time of public distress did Tom Walker set up as a usurer in Boston. His door was soon thronged by customers. The needy and the adventurous; the gambling speculator; the dreaming land jobber; the thriftless tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit; in short, every one driven to raise money by desperate means and desperate sacrifices, hurried to Tom Walker.

“Thus Tom was the universal friend of the needy, and he acted like a ‘friend in need’; that is to say, he always exacted good pay and good security. In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the hardness of his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages; gradually squeezed his customers closer and closer; and sent them, at length, dry as a sponge from his door.”— Washington Irving, “The Devil and Tom Walker,” in Tales of a Traveller (1822)

The most durable horror fiction and movies revolve around our deepest instincts or fears: lust (Dracula), scientists playing God (Frankenstein), or individuals pursued by crowds (Invasion of the Body Snatchers). But somewhat less treated, even in recent years, is greed. The most bone-chilling example of the latter that comes to mind is Edith Wharton’s physically and spiritually wintry New England tale, “The Triumph of Night” (discussed in this prior post of mine), in which a Gilded Age grandee plots to take his nephew’s life as a means of seizing his fortune.

Another fine example, I discovered just this past weekend, is Washington Irving’s short story, “The Devil and Tom Walker.” Of course, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” has become a permanent addition to Halloween lore, and “The Adventure of the German Student” was included in the Library of America’s estimable two-volume anthology, American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny.

But I had never come across “The Devil and Tom Walker” until this past weekend, when I picked up a free book, an American literature textbook for Catholic high school students in the 1950s. I have the distinct impression that, since the postwar era, a selection like this has become less of the norm. New voices have to be accounted for (including from multicultural backgrounds), and Irving’s style—long, flowing sentences, with unfamiliar words such as “termagent”—can turn off students with short attention spans.

More’s the pity, I say. Stick with “The Devil and Tom Walker” and you’ll be riveted by a tale strikingly relevant to our time—and a precursor of a modern Halloween form: mock horror.The latter derives from Irving’s urbane sensibility, a worldview that absorbed other cultures and was not easy to shock.

This past weekend was filled with mock-horror movies: some farcical (Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein), some snarky (Jennifer’s Body), and some just plain juvenile (The Lost Boys). In contrast, Irving’s voice is droll and satiric. (When Tom finds evidence that his wife pulled the thick black hair of Satan before the Devil had dispatched her, the miser senses what had happened: “Tom knew his wife’s prowess by experience.”)

At its heart, “The Devil and Tom Walker” is a retelling of the Faust legend: a human being bargains with Old Scratch for short-term advantage, downplaying any lingering inner doubt that in the end, a debt must be paid.

I was surprised to find out that “The Devil and Tom Walker,” in comparison with “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” has not been adapted beyond the written page much. One of these, a 2008 short, had actually transposed the setting to the South. New England, with his inhospitable soil and Puritan mores to rebel against, would have been a much more natural background for Satan’s temptation of a miser.

On second thought, though, the switch in locale only reinforces the universality of Irving’s story of avarice (Irving himself had picked up the theme from a German folk tale). In fact, its time period can be changed easily, too, from 1727 Massachusetts to New York in the 21^st century. Instead of a usurer (the trade that Satan persuades him to take up), Walker could be depicted as an executive in one of the big banks who, in the financial turbulence of the last decade, manages to fleece customers out of their homes. And, rather than pious Puritans not above colluding in the slave trade or in swindling Native Americans in land deals, Irving could have picked evangelicals who practice their own kind of intolerance and corruption.

Quote of the Day (Washington Irving, on a ‘Sharp Tongue’)

“A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener by constant use.”—Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle” (1820)

Flashback, February 1842: Fatigued Dickens Feted by NYC, Then Bites Its Hand

In 1989, Tom Wolfe wrote a controversial Harper’s essay, “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast,” questioning why writers were neglecting the rich subject of American society for minimalist engagements in navel-gazing.

The kind of fiction Wolfe had in mind was the great urban novel of the 19^th century, especially realistic depictions of Victorian London by Charles Dickens (pictured here in 1842 by American painter Francis Alexander). Of course, when it came to America, Dickens had gotten there first. He had so much to get off his chest that it took him two books to do so: American Notes for General Circulation (1842) and, the following year, Martin Chuzzlewit.

(In the 1980s, I heard a college professor tell an audience at my local library that the one Dickens novel he assigned his students was the latter. It was not only Dickens’ longest work but, at the time anyway, his only novel not covered by Cliff Notes. I guess you could say the prof had a bit of a sadistic streak…)

Americans were outraged to find that this young author they had read so enthusiastically had leveled some of his most devastating criticism against their republic.

But Dickens, unlike many other Europeans, had not visited this country merely to confirm his prejudices. He initially had feelings of great regard for the United States and had been delighted at what he saw at his first stop, Boston.

But, as he continued what became a punishing six-month tour of the United States, Dickens’ idealism about the young country began to flag. He was exhausted by his clamorous fans and hosts, disgusted by many institutions, and resentful over the nation’s refusal to consider a subject he regarded as of the utmost personal importance: copyright laws that would help ensure a steady stream of income for his rapidly growing family.

I’m surprised that the subject of Dickens in America has been of so little interest to filmmakers. The only ones that come to mind are a 1995 Masterpiece Theatre mini-series adaptation of Martin Chuzzlewit, and a 1963 episode of Bonanza featuring Jonathan Harris (Dr. Smith of Lost in Space) as Dickens, incensed that a Virginia City paper was reprinting his work without permission.

Dickens came to America in January 1842 with his wife Catherine for several reasons:

* After a five-year burst of nonstop writing activity that produced The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, and Barnaby Rudge, his nerves badly needed a break.

* In the same way that more recent writers have seen articles as a means of financing their vacations, Dickens thought he’d be able to make money out of what he saw.

* American publishers, continuing a tradition that began with Benjamin Franklin the century before, were flagrantly violating the copyright of British authors such as William Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott—and Dickens knew exactly how much he lost each time an American publisher stiffed him on royalties.

* Dickens thought he saw in the United States an alternative to the squalid conditions of his own country, and wanted to see if the young country matched “the republic of my imagination.”

The 29-year-old author was disappointed, in one degree or another, in all of these hopes.

Dickens could not have been more delighted with Boston. He came to the city in January 1842 at the most opportune time: five years before the Irish Potato Famine drove to its streets emigrants facing the most desperate poverty and the greatest urban squalor. He remembered that when he first glimpsed the city on a Sunday morning, “the air was so clear, the houses were so bright and gay…that every thoroughfare in the city looked exactly like a pantomime.” He was similarly enthralled by the intellectuals such Boston and Cambridge intellectuals as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William H. Prescott, Charles Sumner, and Richard Henry Dana, praising “the humanizing tastes and desires [they]...engendered.”

Bostonians were so excited to see him that they didn’t make a peep when he pleaded for international copyright protection—a subject that struck as much at the economic livelihoods of editors and printers in America as they did Dickens himself.

New Yorkers were beside themselves as they read how Boston had gone all-out for the author. Gothamites, not to be outdone, wanted to give him the biggest greeting given to a foreigner since the Marquis de Lafayette toured America nearly a half century after the start of the Revolutionary War.

And so, they hit on the gaudiest celebration of all, the “Boz Ball” (named after the pen name Dickens had adopted with his first published writing, eight years before). Appropriately enough, they proposed to show him their love with this ball on Valentine’s Day.

The soiree was held in the Park Theatre, which, with capacity seating of 3,000, was the largest arena in the city. Tickets, sold at $5 each, were snapped up almost immediately, and even though some lucky buyers tried to scalp them for as much as $40 apiece, nobody was willing to part with their chance to see the social event of the season.

The “Boz Ball” was an event like no other: “the greatest affair in modern times … the fullest libation upon the altar of the muses,” according to Gotham diarist Philip Hone. Only Donald Trump could have matched its spirit of excess:

· Carriage traffic stretched for a quarter mile from the theater;· The ballroom was decorated with characters from Dickens’ plays;
· Dickens entered the hall accompanied by a general in full-dress uniform, serenaded by the tune “See the Conquering Hero Comes”;
· Tableaux vivants throughout the night pantomimed scenes from Dickens’ novels;
· Guests, one female attendant wrote a friend, consumed “50 hams, 50 tongues, 28,000 stewed oysters, 10,000 pickled oysters, 4,000 candy kisses, and 6,000 candy mottoes. (Oysters, she allowed, might be in short supply following the event.)
· Somehow or other, amid the food, guests and tableaus, space was found—barely—for dancing.

In a letter to close friend and future biographer John Forster, Dickens could hardly stop including details of the night. But the managers of the Park Theatre, who ordinarily had to deal with less-than-capacity crowds for their handsome building, proposed to make more money with another ball at less than half the price.

As the night of the second gala approached, Dickens begged off because of a sore throat. Park Theatre management, fearing the wrath of paying customers, requested a doctor’s certificate. Nothing doing, Dickens responded. It may not have been entirely coincidental that, almost immediately afterward, he announced that he would accept no more invitations to public dinners or receptions.

But there was one more he had to make in the meantime: the “Dickens Dinner,” held four days after the Boz Ball. The banquet, held at the City Hotel, was hosted by Washington Irving, the most famous American author of the time. Lately Thomas’ 1967 history, Delmonico's: A Century of Splendor, observed that for years afterwards, this banquet was regarded as “a model of gastronomy.”

After this, the mood began to sour on both sides. Though Dickens succeeded in getting more than two dozen prominent writers (including Irving) to sign a petition to Congress concerning international copyright, American newspapers began to take sharp exception to his call for creative protection.

For his part, Dickens was growing metaphorically and physically sick and tired of the experience. He loved his visits to the theater, but not to the social institutions he had told his hosts he was also there to document: prisons, almshouses, police stations, a lunatic asylum, and the seedy parts of town. The Tombs, in particular, provoked his disgust (“a place, quite unsurpassed in all the vice, neglect, and devilry, of the worst old town in Europe”).

All this tramping around, in dismal midwinter weather, left Dickens and his wife with colds and sore throats. As they traveled south, their disposition didn’t improve at all. The justification of slaveowners for “the peculiar institution” especially angered him (“Blot out, ye friends of slavery, from the catalogue of human passions, brutal lust, cruelty, and the abuse of irresponsible power”).

Though sales of American Notes that fall were enormous in the United States, the book outraged many of those who had once hailed him. The response of the anonymous reviewer of The New Englander was typical:

“These Notes are barren of incident and anecdote, deficient in wit, and meagre even in respect to the most ordinary kind of information. They give no just conception of the physical aspect of the country of which they treat; much less do they introduce the reader to the homes and firesides of its inhabitants. Nor could any thing better have been expected, since Mr. Dickens merely skimmed over the country, seldom remaining longer in a place than to learn its name, to acquaint himself with the facilities of eating, drinking, and sleeping, afforded by its principal hotel, to note down a few particulars respecting its public buildings and institutions, and to inquire with a professional feeling concerning its alms-houses, its prisons, and its purlieus of low vice and wretchedness . . . . The perusal of [the book] has served chiefly to lower our estimate of the man, and to fill us with contempt for such a compound of egotism, coxcombry, and cockneyism.”

Edgar Allan Poe summed up the general feeling more succinctly: the book was “one of the most suicidal productions, ever deliberately published by its author, who had the least reputation to lose.”

A quarter century later, Dickens returned to the United States, still professing his high regard for this country. This time, the abolition of slavery had eliminated one source of one of his most fiery criticisms of the nation (though it would take two decades more, by which time Dickens was dead, before Congress finally passed international copyright legislation).

Nonetheless, something about this rambunctious country exhausted this writer who, with all his bursting energy, liked to call himself “The Inimitable.” On another visit to New York in December 1867, the writer who, T.S. Eliot wrote, created characters “of greater intensity than human beings” grew so tired after a marathon studio session that he vowed never to be photographed again.

The image taken at this time, therefore, is the last known photograph of the author that nearly everyone--including the city he had turned against--couldn't get enough of.