The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Wr - Washington Irving [14]
A Note on the Text
This edition contains stories from three of Irving’s collections, The Sketch-Book (1820), Bracebridge Hall (1822), and Tales of a Traveller (1824), as well as selections from his early writings: Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent. (1802), Salmagundi (1807-1808), and A History of New York (1809). The text of this edition is based on the Author’s Revised Edition that was issued by Putnam in New York in 1848. With the exception of A History of New York, the selections are arranged chronologically in the order in which Irving published them. In the Author’s Revised Edition, Irving made substantial changes to the style and content of A History. Accordingly, the selections from that volume are placed at the end of this edition. Readers interested in the 1809 edition of A History and any other textual matters should consult The Complete Works of Washington Irving, completed under the general editorship of Henry A. Pochmann, Herbert L. Kleinfield, and Richard Dilworth Rust (see “For Further Reading”).
SELECTIONS FROM
LETTERS OF JONATHAN OLDSTYLE, GENT.1
Letter I
Mr. Editor,—If the observations of an odd old fellow are not wholly superfluous, I would thank you to shove them into a spare corner of your paper.
It is a matter of amusement to an uninterested spectator like myself, to observe the influence fashion has on the dress and deportment of its votaries,a and how very quick they fly from one extreme to the other.
A few years since the rage was,—very high crowned hats with very narrow brims, tight neckcloth, tight coat, tight jacket, tight small-clothes, and shoes loaded with enormous silver buckles; the hair craped, plaited, queued, and powdered;—in short, an air of the greatest spruceness and tightness diffused over the whole person.
The ladies, with their tresses neatly turned up over an immense cushion; waist a yard long, braced up with stays into the smallest compass, and encircled by an enormous hoop; so that the fashionable belle resembled a walking bottle.
Thus dressed, the lady was seen, with the most bewitching languor, reclining on the arm of an extremely attentive beau, who, with a long cane, decorated with an enormous tassel, was carefully employed in removing every stone, stick, or straw that might impede the progress of his tottering companion, whose high-heeled shoes just brought the points of her toes to the ground.
What an alteration has a few years produced! We now behold our gentlemen, with the most studious carelessness and almost slovenliness of dress; large hat, large coat, large neckcloth, large pantaloons, large boots, and hair scratched into every careless direction, lounging along the streets in the most apparent listlessness and vacuity of thought; staring with an unmeaning countenance at every passenger, or leaning upon the arm of some kind fair one for support, with the other hand crammed into his breeches’ pocket. Such is the picture of a modern beau,—in his dress stuffing himself up to the dimensions of a Hercules,b in his manners affecting the helplessness of an invalid.
The belle who has to undergo the fatigue of dragging along this sluggish animal has chosen a character the very reverse,—emulating in her dress and actions all the airy lightness of a sylph, she trips along with the greatest vivacity. Her laughing eye, her countenance enlivened with affability and good-humor, inspire with kindred animation every beholder, except the torpid being by her side, who is either affecting the fashionable sangfroid,c or is wrapt up in profound contemplation of himself.
Heavens! how changed are the manners since I was young! Then, how delightful to contemplate a ball-room,—such bowing, such scraping, such complimenting; nothing but copperplate speechesd to be heard on both sides; no walking but in minuet measure;e nothing more common than to see half a dozen gentlemen