Washington Irving Gave Us Rip Van Winkle, The Headless Horseman, And More

 

Washington Irving (after an 1897 image)

Rip Van Winkle slept through the American Revolution, then found out the country had changed without him. Twenty years gone, and he hadn’t even moved.

 

Washington Irving dreamed him up. Then he sent a headless horseman after a schoolteacher and gave Americans something to think about on the road home.

 

Those two stories have kept his name alive for two centuries. Good luck getting that kind of mileage out of five volumes on George Washington.

 

Irving wrote those, too. Along with books about explorers, fur traders, and Spanish history. He spent years digging through archives, and piecing together other people’s adventures. But the man who slept through everything still gets top billing.

 

Born in New York City on April 3, 1783, Irving was the youngest of eleven children. His parents named him after George Washington. Law looked like a promising career.

 

He was more interested in books, theaters, and seeing what was around the next bend.

 

New York gave him plenty of material to work with. Trips up the Hudson River supplied old Dutch villages, wooded hills, and stories he’d hang on to. In 1798, yellow fever drove him out of the city to stay in Tarrytown, near the countryside he’d eventually populate with ghosts.

 

Irving studied law and qualified for the bar in 1806, but he’d already found something he liked better. At nineteen, he was writing humorous letters for his brother Peter’s newspaper, signing them Jonathan Oldstyle.

 

The name suited his habit of borrowing a voice and having a little fun at somebody else’s expense.

 

In 1807, he joined his brother William and James Kirke Paulding in producing Salmagundi. They took swipes at New York’s fashions, politics, and people who thought too much of themselves. There was no shortage of material.

 

Two years later came A History of New York, supposedly written by Diedrich Knickerbocker.

The Headless Horseman

Rip Van Winkle slept through the American Revolution, then found out the country had changed without him. Twenty years gone, and he hadn’t even moved.

 

Washington Irving dreamed him up. Then he sent a headless horseman after a schoolteacher and gave Americans something to think about on the road home.

 

Those two stories have kept his name alive for two centuries. Good luck getting that kind of mileage out of five volumes on George Washington.

 

Irving wrote those, too. Along with books about explorers, fur traders, and Spanish history. He spent years digging through archives, and piecing together other people’s adventures. But the man who slept through everything still gets top billing.

 

Born in New York City on April 3, 1783, Irving was the youngest of eleven children. His parents named him after George Washington. Law looked like a promising career.

 

He was more interested in books, theaters, and seeing what was around the next bend.

 

New York gave him plenty of material to work with. Trips up the Hudson River supplied old Dutch villages, wooded hills, and stories he’d hang on to. In 1798, yellow fever drove him out of the city to stay in Tarrytown, near the countryside he’d eventually populate with ghosts.

 

Irving studied law and qualified for the bar in 1806, but he’d already found something he liked better. At nineteen, he was writing humorous letters for his brother Peter’s newspaper, signing them Jonathan Oldstyle.

 

The name suited his habit of borrowing a voice and having a little fun at somebody else’s expense.

 

In 1807, he joined his brother William and James Kirke Paulding in producing Salmagundi. They took swipes at New York’s fashions, politics, and people who thought too much of themselves. There was no shortage of material.

 

Two years later came A History of New York, supposedly written by Diedrich Knickerbocker.

 

His Dutch governors blustered through a ridiculous version of old New York. He poked fun at the past and the learned gentlemen who made such a production of explaining it. Before he became a serious historian, he’d enjoyed himself at their expense.

 

Then his own life went terribly wrong. His fiancée, Matilda Hoffman, died of tuberculosis in 1809. He never married, and years later he still struggled to talk about her.

 

He moved among editing, writing, and the family business without settling comfortably into any of them. In 1815, he went to England.

 

The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., published in 1819–1820, mixed travel pieces, essays, and stories. “Rip Van Winkle” appeared early in the collection. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” followed.

 The book caught on in America and Britain, and Irving found himself famous.

 

Francis Jeffrey, reviewing it in the Edinburgh Review in 1820, predicted it would “form an era” in American literature. British critics could be hard on American books. Here was one they had to take seriously.

 

Richard Henry Dana wasn’t quite so dazzled. Writing in the North American Review in 1819, he preferred some of Irving’s earlier work and picked at his style.

 

Still, the collection found an eager audience. Readers even loved the sentimental pieces most of us skip past today.

 

Rip offered a tempting arrangement: have a drink, find a comfortable spot, and let the world take care of itself. Then he comes home and discovers what it’s like to be forgotten.

 

Funny, until you think about it.

 

Ichabod Crane filled his head with ghost stories, then rode home alone in the dark. By the time the horseman turned up, Ichabod was well prepared to scare himself senseless.

 

Irving never quite tells us what happened. Ghost or prank? Ichabod leaves town before anyone can get a satisfactory answer.

 

European folklore helped furnish both tales, but Irving planted them in familiar soil. He wrote “Sleepy Hollow” in England, remembering a Hudson Valley an ocean away.

 

The serious historical books came later. By then, he knew how to keep a reader turning pages, taking that knack into the archives.

 

Spain gave him a place to start. Arriving in 1826, he dug through historical materials about Columbus. A proposed translation grew into a biography, published in 1828.

 

He worked through documentary collections and libraries, following the paper trail. His travels in southern Spain also supplied places and stories for books about Granada and the Alhambra.

 

Critics liked what he was doing. Jeffrey thought the Columbus biography would replace earlier accounts and never be replaced itself.

 

For Astoria, Irving faced a problem no amount of travel through Spain could solve. He’d never been to Oregon Country.

 

John Jacob Astor approached him in 1834 about writing the history of his Pacific Fur Company. Astor’s plan for a trading empire reaching the Pacific had fallen apart. He wanted people to understand how big an undertaking it had been.

 

He had the paperwork to prove it: journals, letters, business records, accounts of sea voyages and journeys across the mountains.

 

Irving’s nephew, Pierre Munro Irving, sorted documents and gathered facts, saving his uncle a great deal of rummaging. Then came the job of turning the pile into a book.

 

The traders hadn’t always written what Irving wanted. They were tired, busy, and trying to get somewhere. Describing the scenery for a future author wasn’t their chief concern.

 

Irving filled gaps with other travelers’ published accounts, including those of Lewis and Clark, Gabriel Franchère, and Ross Cox.

 

Astoria, published in 1836, brought the enterprise to life. Ships, rival companies, wilderness journeys, men hungry or lost or pushing on. It gave readers an adventure built from records.

 

Edgar Allan Poe reviewed it in the Southern Literary Messenger in January 1837. He said Irving had handled the work “in a masterly manner,” admiring the way scattered, imperfect information had become a connected story.

 

The book sold well. It also reflected Irving’s admiration for Astor and enthusiasm for American expansion. He’d done the research, but he had his favorites.

 

His last great undertaking brought him back to the man he’d been named after.

 

For Life of George Washington, Irving examined State Department archives, visited Mount Vernon, and gathered documents from descendants of Washington and his associates. He sought recollections from Washington’s step-grandson, George Washington Parke Custis.

 

Then he went home to make sense of it.

 

The five volumes appeared between 1855 and 1859. Historian William Hickling Prescott praised Irving for making Washington “a being of flesh and blood.” In 1864, the Atlantic Monthly declared, “No man could have done this work better.”

 

Irving finished the last volume shortly before his death in November 1859. His health was failing. He’d worried he wouldn’t live to get it done.

 

Years of research. Five volumes. A race to the finish.

 

Rip still gets more attention.