The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

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prepared by Nelson Nieves

The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

by Washington Irving

CONTENTS:
Preface
The Author's Account of Himself
The Voyage
Roscoe
The Wife
Rip Van Winkle
English Writers on America
Rural Life in England
The Broken Heart
The Art of Book-making
A Royal Poet
The Country Church
The Widow and her Son
A Sunday in London
The Boar's Head Tavern
The Mutability of Literature
Rural Funerals
The Inn Kitchen
The Spectre Bridegroom
Westminster Abbey
Christmas
The Stage-Coach
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
The Christmas Dinner
London Antiques
Little Britain
Statford-on-Avon
Traits of Indian Character
Philip of Pokanoket
John Bull
The Pride of the Village
The Angler
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
L'Envoy

THE SKETCH-BOOK OF GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.

by WASHINGTON IRVING.

"I have no wife nor children, good or bad, to provide for. A mere
spectator of other men's fortunes and adventures, and how they
play their parts; which, methinks, are diversely presented unto
me, as from a common theatre or scene."--BURTON.

PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION.

THE following papers, with two exceptions, were written in
England, and formed but part of an intended series for which I
had made notes and memorandums. Before I could mature a plan,
however, circumstances compelled me to send them piecemeal to the
United States, where they were published from time to time in
portions or numbers. It was not my intention to publish them in
England, being conscious that much of their contents could be
interesting only to American readers, and, in truth, being
deterred by the severity with which American productions had been
treated by the British press.

By the time the contents of the first volume had appeared in this
occasional manner, they began to find their way across the
Atlantic, and to be inserted, with many kind encomiums, in the
London Literary Gazette. It was said, also, that a London
bookseller intended to publish them in a collective form. I
determined, therefore, to bring them forward myself, that they
might at least have the benefit of my superintendence and
revision. I accordingly took the printed numbers which I had
received from the United States, to Mr. John Murray, the eminent
publisher, from whom I had already received friendly attentions,
and left them with him for examination, informing him that should
he be inclined to bring them before the public, I had materials
enough on hand for a second volume. Several days having elapsed
without any communication from Mr. Murray, I addressed a note to
him, in which I construed his silence into a tacit rejection of
my work, and begged that the numbers I had left with him might be
returned to me. The following was his reply:

MY DEAR SIR: I entreat you to believe that I feel truly obliged
by your kind intentions towards me, and that I entertain the most
unfeigned respect for your most tasteful talents. My house is
completely filled with workpeople at this time, and I have only
an office to transact business in; and yesterday I was wholly
occupied, or I should have done myself the pleasure of seeing
you.

If it would not suit me to engage in the publication of your
present work, it is only because I do not see that scope in the
nature of it which would enable me to make those satisfactory
accounts between us, without which I really feel no satisfaction
in engaging--but I will do all I can to promote their
circulation, and shall be most ready to attend to any future plan
of yours.

With much regard, I remain, dear sir,
Your faithful servant,
JOHN MURRAY.

This was disheartening, and might have deterred me from any
further prosecution of the matter, had the question of
republication in Great Britain rested entirely with me; but I
apprehended the appearance of a spurious edition. I now thought
of Mr. Archibald Constable as publisher, having been treated by
him with much hospitality during a visit to Edinburgh; but first
I determined to submit my work to Sir-Walter (then Mr.) Scott,
being encouraged to do so by the cordial reception I had
experienced from him at Abbotsford a few years previously, and by
the favorable opinion he had expressed to others of my earlier
writings. I accordingly sent him the printed numbers of the
Sketch-Book in a parcel by coach, and at the same time wrote to
him, hinting that since I had had the pleasure of partaking of
his hospitality, a reverse had taken place in my affairs which
made the successful exercise of my pen all-important to me; I
begged him, therefore, to look over the literary articles I had
forwarded to him, and, if he thought they would bear European
republication, to ascertain whether Mr. Constable would be
inclined to be the publisher.

The parcel containing my work went by coach to Scott's address in
Edinburgh; the letter went by mail to his residence in the
country. By the very first post I received a reply, before he had
seen my work.

"I was down at Kelso," said he, "when your letter reached
Abbotsford. I am now on my way to town, and will converse with
Constable, and do all in my power to forward your views--I assure
you nothing will give me more pleasure."

The hint, however, about a reverse of fortune had struck the
quick apprehension of Scott, and, with that practical and
efficient good-will which belonged to his nature, he had already
devised a way of aiding me. A weekly periodical, he went on to
inform me, was about to be set up in Edinburgh, supported by the
most respectable talents, and amply furnished with all the
necessary information. The appointment of the editor, for which
ample funds were provided, would be five hundred pounds sterling
a year, with the reasonable prospect of further advantages. This
situation, being apparently at his disposal, he frankly offered
to me. The work, however, he intimated, was to have somewhat of a
political bearing, and he expressed an apprehension that the tone
it was desired to adopt might not suit me. "Yet I risk the
question," added he, "because I know no man so well qualified for
this important task, and perhaps because it will necessarily
bring you to Edinburgh. If my proposal does not suit, you need
only keep the matter secret and there is no harm done. `And for
my love I pray you wrong me not.' If on the contrary you think it
could be made to suit you, let me know as soon as possible,
addressing Castle Street, Edinburgh."

In a postscript, written from Edinburgh, he adds, "I am just come
here, and have glanced over the Sketch-Book. It is positively
beautiful, and increases my desire to crimp you, if it be
possible. Some difficulties there always are in managing such a
matter, especially at the outset; but we will obviate them as
much as we possibly can."

The following is from an imperfect draught of my reply, which
underwent some modifications in the copy sent:

"I cannot express how much I am gratified by your letter. I had
begun to feel as if I had taken an unwarrantable liberty; but,
somehow or other, there is a genial sunshine about you that warms
every creeping thing into heart and confidence. Your literary
proposal both surprises and flatters me, as it evinces a much
higher opinion of my talents than I have myself."

I then went on to explain that I found myself peculiarly unfitted
for the situation offered to me, not merely by my political
opinions, but by the very constitution and habits of my mind. "My
whole course of life," I observed, "has been desultory, and I am
unfitted for any periodically recurring task, or any stipulated
labor of body or mind. I have no command of my talents, such as
they are, and have to watch the varyings of my mind as I would
those of a weathercock. Practice and training may bring me more
into rule; but at present I am as useless for regular service as
one of my own country Indians or a Don Cossack.

"I must, therefore, keep on pretty much as I have begun; writing
when I can, not when I would. I shall occasionally shift my
residence and write whatever is suggested by objects before me,
or whatever rises in my imagination; and hope to write better and
more copiously by and by.

I am playing the egotist, but I know no better way of answering
your proposal than by showing what a very good-for-nothing kind
of being I am. Should Mr. Constable feel inclined to make a
bargain for the wares I have on hand, he will encourage me to
further enterprise; and it will be something like trading with a
gypsy for the fruits of his prowlings, who may at one time have
nothing but a wooden bowl to offer, and at another time a silver
tankard."

In reply, Scott expressed regret, but not surprise, at my
declining what might have proved a troublesome duty. He then
recurred to the original subject of our correspondence; entered
into a detail of the various terms upon which arrangements were
made between authors and booksellers, that I might take my
choice; expressing the most encouraging confidence of the success
of my work, and of previous works which I had produced in
America. "I did no more," added he, "than open the trenches with
Constable; but I am sure if you will take the trouble to write to
him, you will find him disposed to treat your overtures with
every degree of attention. Or, if you think it of consequence in
the first place to see me, I shall be in London in the course of
a month, and whatever my experience can command is most heartily
at your command. But I can add little to what I have said above,
except my earnest recommendation to Constable to enter into the
negotiation."*

* I cannot avoid subjoining in a note a succeeding paragraph of
Scott's letter, which, though it does not relate to the main
subject of our correspondence, was too characteristic to be
emitted. Some time previously I had sent Miss Sophia Scott small
duodecimo American editions of her father's poems published in
Edinburgh in quarto volumes; showing the "nigromancy" of the
American press, by which a quart of wine is conjured into a pint
bottle. Scott observes: "In my hurry, I have not thanked you in
Sophia's name for the kind attention which furnished her with the
American volumes. I am not quite sure I can add my own, since you
have made her acquainted with much more of papa's folly than she
would ever otherwise have learned; for I had taken special care
they should never see any of those things during their earlier
years. I think I have told you that Walter is sweeping the
firmament with a feather like a maypole and indenting the
pavement with a sword like a scythe--in other words, he has
become a whiskered hussar in the 18th Dragoons."

Before the receipt of this most obliging letter, however, I had
determined to look to no leading bookseller for a launch, but to
throw my work before the public at my own risk, and let it sink
or swim according to its merits. I wrote to that effect to Scott,
and soon received a reply:

"I observe with pleasure that you are going to come forth in
Britain. It is certainly not the very best way to publish on
one's own accompt; for the booksellers set their face against the
circulation of such works as do not pay an amazing toll to
themselves. But they have lost the art of altogether damming up
the road in such cases between the author and the public, which
they were once able to do as effectually as Diabolus in John
Bunyan's Holy War closed up the windows of my Lord
Understanding's mansion. I am sure of one thing, that you have
only to be known to the British public to be admired by them, and
I would not say so unless I really was of that opinion.

"If you ever see a witty but rather local publication called
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, you will find some notice of your
works in the last number: the author is a friend of mine, to whom
I have introduced you in your literary capacity. His name is
Lockhart, a young man of very considerable talent, and who will
soon be intimately connected with my family. My faithful friend
Knickerbocker is to be next examined and illustrated. Constable
was extremely willing to enter into consideration of a treaty for
your works, but I foresee will be still more so when

Your name is up, and may go
From Toledo to Madrid.

------And that will soon be the case. I trust to be in London
about the middle of the month, and promise myself great pleasure
in once again shaking you by the hand."

The first volume of the Sketch-Book was put to press in London,
as I had resolved, at my own risk, by a bookseller unknown to
fame, and without any of the usual arts by which a work is
trumpeted into notice. Still some attention had been called to it
by the extracts which had previously appeared in the Literary
Gazette, and by the kind word spoken by the editor of that
periodical, and it was getting into fair circulation, when my
worthy bookseller failed before the first month was over, and the
sale was interrupted.

At this juncture Scott arrived in London. I called to him for
help, as I was sticking in the mire, and, more propitious than
Hercules, he put his own shoulder to the wheel. Through his
favorable representations, Murray was quickly induced to
undertake the future publication of the work which he had
previously declined. A further edition of the first volume was
struck off and the second volume was put to press, and from that
time Murray became my publisher, conducting himself in all his
dealings with that fair, open, and liberal spirit which had
obtained for him the well-merited appellation of the Prince of
Booksellers.

Thus, under the kind and cordial auspices of Sir Walter Scott, I
began my literary career in Europe; and I feel that I am but
discharging, in a trifling degree, my debt of gratitude to the
memory of that golden-hearted man in acknowledging my obligations
to him. But who of his literary contemporaries ever applied to
him for aid or counsel that did not experience the most prompt,
generous, and effectual assistance?

W. I.

SUNNYSIDE, 1848.

CONTENTS.
----
Preface
The Author's Account of Himself
The Voyage
Roscoe
The Wife
Rip Van Winkle
English Writers on America
Rural Life in England
The Broken Heart
The Art of Book-making
A Royal Poet
The Country Church
The Widow and her Son
A Sunday in London
The Boar's Head Tavern
The Mutability of Literature
Rural Funerals
The Inn Kitchen
The Spectre Bridegroom
Westminster Abbey
Christmas
The Stage-Coach
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
The Christmas Dinner
London Antiques
Little Britain
Statford-on-Avon
Traits of Indian Character
Philip of Pokanoket
John Bull
The Pride of the Village
The Angler
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
L'Envoy

THE SKETCH BOOK.
----
THE AUTHOR'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF

I am of this mind with Homer, that as the snaile that crept out
of her shel was turned eftsoones into a toad I and thereby was
forced to make a stoole to sit on; so the traveller that
stragleth from his owne country is in a short time transformed
into so monstrous a shape, that he is faine to alter his mansion
with his manners, and to live where he can, not where he
would.--LYLY'S EUPHUES.

I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange
characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my
travels, and made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and
unknown regions of my native city, to the frequent alarm of my
parents, and the emolument of the town crier. As I grew into
boyhood, I extended the range of my observations. My holiday
afternoons were spent in rambles about the surrounding country. I
made myself familiar with all its places famous in history or
fable. I knew every spot where a murder or robbery had been
committed, or a ghost seen. I visited the neighboring villages,
and added greatly to my stock of knowledge, by noting their
habits and customs, and conversing with their sages and great
men. I even journeyed one long summer's day to the summit of the
most distant hill, whence I stretched my eye over many a mile of
terra incognita, and was astonished to find how vast a globe I
inhabited.

This rambling propensity strengthened with my years. Books of
voyages and travels became my passion, and in devouring their
contents, I neglected the regular exercises of the school. How
wistfully would I wander about the pier-heads in fine weather,
and watch the parting ships, bound to distant climes; with what
longing eyes would I gaze after their lessening sails, and waft
myself in imagination to the ends of the earth!

Further reading and thinking, though they brought this vague
inclination into more reasonable bounds, only served to make it
more decided. I visited various parts of my own country; and had
I been merely a lover of fine scenery, I should have felt little
desire to seek elsewhere its gratification, for on no country had
the charms of nature been more prodigally lavished. Her mighty
lakes, her oceans of liquid silver; her mountains, with their
bright aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility;
her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her
boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad,
deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her
trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its
magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds
and glorious sunshine;--no, never need an American ok beyond his
own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery.

But Europe held forth all the charms of storied and poetical
association. There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, the
refinements of highly cultivated society, the quaint
peculiarities of ancient and local custom. My native country was
full of youthful promise; Europe was rich in the accumulated
treasures of age. Her very ruins told the history of the times
gone by, and every mouldering stone was a chronicle. I longed to
wander over the scenes of renowned achievement--to tread, as it
were, in the footsteps of antiquity--to loiter about the ruined
castle--to meditate on the falling tower--to escape, in short,
from the commonplace realities of the present, and lose myself
among the shadowy grandeurs of the past.

I had, besides all this, an earnest desire to see the great men
of the earth. We have, it is true, our great men in America: not
a city but has an ample share of them. I have mingled among them
in my time, and been almost withered by the shade into which they
cast me; for there is nothing so baleful to a small man as the
shade of a great one, particularly the great man of a city. But I
was anxious to see the great men of Europe; for I had read in the
works of various philosophers, that all animals degenerated in
America, and man among the number. A great man of Europe, thought
I, must therefore be as superior to a great man of America, as a
peak of the Alps to a highland of the Hudson; and in this idea I
was confirmed by observing the comparative importance and
swelling magnitude of many English travellers among us, who, I
was assured, were very little people in their own country. I will
visit this land of wonders, thought I, and see the gigantic race
from which I am degenerated.

It has been either my good or evil lot to have my roving passion
gratified. I have wandered through different countries and
witnessed many of the shifting scenes of life. I cannot say that
I have studied them with the eye of a philosopher, but rather
with the sauntering gaze with which humble lovers of the
picturesque stroll from the window of one print-shop to another;
caught sometimes by the delineations of beauty, sometimes by the
distortions of caricature, and sometimes by the loveliness of
landscape. As it is the fashion for modern tourists to travel
pencil in hand, and bring home their portfolios filled with
sketches, I am disposed to get up a few for the entertainment of
my friends. When, however, I look over the hints and memorandums
I have taken down for the purpose, my heart almost fails me, at
finding how my idle humor has led me astray from the great object
studied by every regular traveller who would make a book. I fear
I shall give equal disappointment with an unlucky
landscape-painter, who had travelled on the Continent, but
following the bent of his vagrant inclination, had sketched in
nooks, and corners, and by-places. His sketch-book was
accordingly crowded with cottages, and landscapes, and obscure
ruins; but he had neglected to paint St. Peter's, or the
Coliseum, the cascade of Terni, or the bay of Naples, and had not
a single glacier or volcano in his whole collection.

THE VOYAGE.

Ships, ships, I will descrie you
Amidst the main,
I will come and try you,
What you are protecting,
And projecting,
What's your end and aim.
One goes abroad for merchandise and trading,
Another stays to keep his country from invading,
A third is coming home with rich and wealthy lading.
Hallo! my fancie, whither wilt thou go?
OLD POEM.

To an American visiting Europe, the long voyage he has to make is
an excellent preparative. The temporary absence of worldly scenes
and employments produces a state of mind peculiarly fitted to
receive new and vivid impressions. The vast space of waters that
separate the hemispheres is like a blank page in existence. There
is no gradual transition by which, as in Europe, the features and
population of one country blend almost imperceptibly with those
of another. From the moment you lose sight of the land you have
left, all is vacancy, until you step on the opposite shore, and
are launched at once into the bustle and novelties of another
world.

In travelling by land there is a continuity of scene, and a
connected succession of persons and incidents, that carry on the
story of life, and lessen the effect of absence and separation.
We drag, it is true, "a lengthening chain" at each remove of our
pilgrimage; but the chain is unbroken; we can trace it back link
by link; and we feel that the last still grapples us to home. But
a wide sea voyage severs us at once. It makes us conscious of
being cast loose from the secure anchorage of settled life, and
sent adrift upon a doubtful world. It interposes a gulf, not
merely imaginary, but real, between us and our homes--a gulf,
subject to tempest, and fear, and uncertainty, rendering distance
palpable, and return precarious.

Such, at least, was the case with myself. As I saw the last blue
lines of my native land fade away like a cloud in the horizon, it
seemed as if I had closed one volume of the world and its
concerns, and had time for meditation, before I opened another.
That land, too, now vanishing from my view, which contained all
most dear to me in life; what vicissitudes might occur in
it--what changes might take place in me, before I should visit it
again! Who can tell, when he sets forth to wander, whither he may
be driven by the uncertain currents of existence; or when he may
return; or whether it may be ever his lot to revisit the scenes
of his childhood?

I said, that at sea all is vacancy; I should correct the
impression. To one given to day-dreaming, and fond of losing
himself in reveries, a sea voyage is full of subjects for
meditation; but then they are the wonders of the deep and of the
air, and rather tend to abstract the mind from worldly themes. I
delighted to loll over the quarter-railing or climb to the
main-top, of a calm day, and muse for hours together on the
tranquil bosom of a summer's sea; to gaze upon the piles of
golden clouds just peering above the horizon, fancy them some
fairy realms, and people them with a creation of my own; --to
watch the gently undulating billows rolling their silver volumes,
as if to die away on those happy shores.

There was a delicious sensation of mingled security and awe with
which I looked down, from my giddy height, on the monsters of the
deep at their uncouth gambols: shoals of porpoises tumbling about
the bow of the ship; the grampus, slowly heaving his huge form
above the surface; or the ravenous shark, darting, like a
spectre, through the blue waters. My imagination would conjure up
all that I had heard or read of the watery world beneath me; of
the finny herds that roam its fathomless valleys; of the
shapeless monsters that lurk among the very foundations of the
earth; and of those wild phantasms that swell the tales of
fishermen and sailors.

Sometimes a distant sail, gliding along the edge of the ocean,
would be another theme of idle speculation. How interesting this
fragment of a world, hastening to rejoin the great mass of
existence! What a glorious monument of human invention; which has
in a manner triumphed over wind and wave; has brought the ends of
the world into communion; has established an interchange of
blessings, pouring into the sterile regions of the north all the
luxuries of the south; has diffused the light of knowledge, and
the charities of cultivated life; and has thus bound together
those scattered portions of the human race, between which nature
seemed to have thrown an insurmountable barrier.

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