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Irving said he was looking forward to seeing Dad when he reached Philadelphia. "It is nice to have seen you," he said, "but I have still to see your father," as though I was not enough. DEAREST MOTHER: I cannot tell you how touched and moved I was by the three initials in the book.
Suddenly the host arose and said: "Gentlemen, we have with us to-night " Of course, that meant an introductory speech about Irving and a reply from the guest. Irving turned to me, and in his deepest and most tragic Macbeth voice said: "God damn his soul to hell!"
It is Sunnyside to this day, altered by additions made in the intervening years, but still the house of Irving; and the ivy clinging to its walls has sprung from a root taken from the ruins of Scott's "fair Melrose" and planted where it now grows by the friendly hand of Jane Renwick. Here was once the home of John T. Irving, a nephew of the author.
But Bryant would have been the first to name Washington Irving as the most renowned distinctively American man of letters whose figure, reproduced characteristically and with simple quaintness, should decorate the Park. To a statue of Washington Irving all the gates should open, as every heart would open, in welcome.
Soon after Knickerbocker came out, Irving went to Albany in the fruitless pursuit of a minor court appointment. There he found his name come not altogether pleasantly before him.
Irving says that a lad "whose passions are not strong enough in youth to mislead him from that path of science which his tutors, and not his inclinations, have chalked out, by four or five years' perseverance, will probably obtain every advantage and honor his college can bestow.
When one thinks of the long line of American writers who have greatly pleased in this sort, and who even got their first fame in it, one must grieve to see it obsolescent. Irving, Curtis, Bayard Taylor, Herman Melville, Ross Browne, Warner, Ik Marvell, Longfellow, Lowell, Story, Mr. James, Mr. Aldrich, Mr. Hay, Mrs. Hunt, Mr.
Irving, in the part of Juba, was called a little sooner than he expected, and came on the boards with his mouth full of honey-cake. Speech was out of the question vox haesit there was a momentary deadlock in his throat. The audience began to laugh, but the prince was not to be counted out.
The walls and window panes are covered with the names of visitors, while inside are kept albums for the autographs of kings, queens, of Scott, Byron, Irving, and others. One of the three rooms below is an ancient kitchen, where by the big open chimney the poet often sat.
At the same time, it is improbable that one so sensitive to criticism meant to convey the impression that it was of his audience alone he thought in shrinking from the effort. It appears that Washington Irving suffered from actual stage-fright. In the Library edition of Irving's works appears the following anecdote from the reminiscences of Mrs.
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