Michael Dirda

For as luck would have it, just before reading Jones's biography, I ran into a friend -- an actor by profession -- who is an ardent Irving collector. Why in the world, I asked him, do you collect Washington Irving of all people? He answered, "I find nearly everything he wrote absolutely enchanting."

That was enough for me. I spent a couple of days reading around a handy little volume of Irving's "representative writings," first published in 1934. Those writings weren't at all what I expected: A History of New York and a good deal of The Sketch Book were genuinely funny, with a sly, almost Wodehouse-like humor. Take this description of the wondrous accomplishments of the heroine of "The Spectre Bridegroom":

"By the time she was eighteen she could embroider to admiration, and had worked whole histories of the saints in tapestry, with such strength of expression in their countenances that they looked like so many souls in purgatory. She could read without great difficulty, and had spelled her way through several church legends. . . . She had even made considerable proficiency in writing; could sign her own name without missing a letter, and so legibly that her aunts could read it without spectacles."

I discovered that Irving's prose was a model of neoclassical elegance and syntactic balance -- which, Jones tells us, was why the British so admired it. In one essay, "Traits of Indian Character," Irving even spoke with a surprisingly modern sympathy for Native Americans and their culture -- and scathingly indicted white colonialists for destroying them and it: "The whites have too frequently set them an example of violence, by burning their villages and laying waste their slender means of subsistence; and yet they wonder that savages do not show moderation and magnanimity towards those who have left them nothing but mere existence and wretchedness." In such fine stories as "The Adventure of the German Student" (from Tales of a Traveller) or "Legend of the Arabian Astrologer" (from The Alhambra), Irving is just spellbinding. The first is a classic ghost story, the second a superb tale of magic and trickery. Little wonder he has long been regarded as the father of the short story in America.

Yet even though he was a pioneering figure in American literature, Irving shouldn't be viewed as primitive or rough-hewn. He possessed a romantic sensibility but wrote with 18th-century suavity. In fact, as he once said in a letter, he viewed himself as a stylist:

"For my part, I consider a story merely as a frame on which to stretch my materials. It is the play of thought, and sentiment, and language; the weaving in of characters, lightly, yet expressively delineated; the familiar and faithful exhibition of scenes in common life; and the half-concealed vein of humor that is often playing through the whole, -- these are among what I aim at, and upon which I felicitate myself in proportion as I think I succeed."

Brian Jay Jones quotes from Irving's letters and journals throughout his biography, so he does convey something of the writer's genial narrative manner. And, despite his prefatory admonition, Jones also offers concise but telling summaries of the major works, noting that "Sleepy Hollow," for instance, is "less about plot than mood." But I think Washington Irving: An American Original, as good as it is, missed a chance to be a bit more useful to modern readers: We really need a contemporary introduction to Irving's wonderful stories and sketches, one that makes people want to explore and enjoy his humorous, elegant and atmospheric prose. That said, Jones's book is a start. Washington Irving was once the most famous writer in America, which means nothing in itself. But he is, as I myself have only lately discovered, still worth reading -- and not for instruction but for all kinds of pleasure and delight. *

Michael Dirda's e-mail address is mdirda@gmail.com.