The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Wr - Washington Irving [11]
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 on Irving’s conception of The Sketch-Book. Scott’s deep interest in folklore as the foundational element of a national culture confirmed Irving’s intuition that a legend of Sleepy Hollow might merit as much attention as Rob Roy.
When Irving returned to Liverpool to appear before the Commissioners of Bankruptcy with his brother Peter, he already had decided to pursue a career in literature. His brother William, a congressman back in Washington, D.C., made arrangements for him to serve as first clerk in the Navy Department at a comfortable salary, but Irving declined the post, for he was determined “to raise myself once more by my talents, and owe nothing to compassion” (Williams, vol. 2, p. 260). In a letter of explanation to his brother Ebenezer, he declared, “My talents are merely literary,” and pleaded “to be left for a little while entirely to the bent of my own inclination, and not agitated by new plans for subsistence, or by entreaties to come home” (Irving, vol. 23, p. 541). The brothers honored his request, and by June 1819 the first installment of The Sketch-Book was in print in America. Irving had more difficulty finding a publisher in England and eventually made arrangements to print the first volume at his own expense. The early reviews were positive, praising Irving for his style and recognizing him as that hitherto unheard of thing, a genuine American man of letters. Now confident that the book would pay for itself, London publisher John Murray agreed to take over publication of the remaining volumes, and Irving’s reputation was assured.
The Sketch-Book marks the apex of Irving’s career. Having declared his independence from his family, he was confident enough to declare independence for American literature as well, which he did overtly in “English Writers on America” (p. 91 ). More importantly, his narrator, Geoffrey Crayon, was a prototypical figure of the American individual. In