Washington Irving's Writings on the Rise and Fall of Spain
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Notes 1 “My King, My Country, and My Faith”: Washington Irving’s Writings on the Rise and Fall of Spain 1. The World Displayed, or, A curious collection of voyages and travels, selected from the writers of all nations: in which the conjectures and interpolations of several vain editors and translators are expunged, every relation is made concise and plain, and the division of countries and kingdoms are clearly and distinctly noted: illustrated and embellished with variety (London: Printed for J. Newbery, at the Bible and Sun, in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1759). 2. Rolena Adorno, “Washington Irving’s Romantic Hispanism and Its Columbian Legacies,” in Spain in America: The Origins of Hispanism in the United States, edited by Richard L. Kagan (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002), pp. 49–105. I am extremely indebted to this and two other essays by Rolena Adorno, “Early Anglo-American Hispanism in the ‘Columbian Encounter’ of Washington Irving and Martín Fernández de Navarrete,” which appeared in the Pre-Actas of the Conference “El hispanismo anglonorteamericano: Aportaciones, problemas y perspec- tivas sobre Historia, Arte y Literatura españolas (siglos XVI–XVIII)” (Córdoba: Universidad de Córdoba, 1997), pp. 5–40, and the revised version that appeared in the book of the same title, edited by José Manuel de Bernardo Ares (Córdoba: Publicaciones Obra Social y Cultural Cajasur, 2001). Adorno’s essay appears on pp. 87–106. See also Stanley T. Williams, The Life of Washington Irving, 2 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1935), and The Spanish Background of American Literature, 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955). He discusses Irving’s youthful readings in volumes I, pp. 20–21 of the former title, and II, pp. 9–11, of the latter. An insightful treatment of Washington Irving as a traveler is by Pere Gifra- Adroher, Between History and Romance: Travel Writing on Spain in the Early Nineteenth-Century United States (Madison: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000), pp. 122–157. The best recent biography is by Andrew Burstein, The Original Knickerbocker (New York: Basic Books, 2007). 3. References to Cervantes’s Don Quixote can be found in Washington Irving’s letters to his brother William Irving, Jr., December 28, 1804, in Letters (1802–1823), 2 vols., edited by Ralph M. Alderman, Herbert L. Kleinfield, and Jenifer S. Banks (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978), I, p. 144. See also a reference to La Galatea in a letter to Mary Fairlie, May 2, 1807, Letters, I, p. 231. 4. Williams, Life, I, p. 284. 5. Washington Irving to Thomas Storrow, Haarlem, July 11, 1822, in Letters, I, p. 693. Irving mentioned Everett’s invitation in his journal of January 30, 1826, in Journals and Notebooks, vol. III (1819–1827), edited by Walter A. Reichart (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1970), p. 563. Also, in the preface of his A History of the 190 NOTES Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus [1828], in The Works of Washington Irving, 15 vols. (New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1904), VI, p. 7. A letter from Lucretia Orne Everett to her father, dated in Madrid, January 9, 1826, suggests that Alexander Everett had proposed the idea to Irving “the other day” meaning very recently, and that “Irving caught at the proposition immediately.” Everett-Peabody family papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. 6. Irving to Storrow, Bordeaux, February 3, 1826, in Letters (1823–1828), II, pp. 171–172. The letters of Irving and Storrow have also been edited by Stanley T. Williams, Washington Irving and the Storrows: Letters from England and the Continent, 1821–1828 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933), pp. 64–65. 7. Irving, Journal entry of February 16, 1826, in The Journals of Washington Irving, edited by William P. Trent and George S. Hellman, 3 vols. (Boston: The Bibliophile Society), III, p. 9, henceforth JWI. Although covering Irving’s Spanish notes, this edition ends abruptly on April 30, 1828, and resumes July 28, 1829. For coverage of the hiatus, see Clara Louisa Penney, ed., Washington Irving Diary: Spain 1828–1829 (New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1926). Henceforth cited as WID. 8. Irving, Journal entry of August 9, 1826. JWI, III, p. 36. Demetrio Ramos Pérez has argued that as a Romantic, Irving was drawn into Spain’s peculiar medieval history precisely because of its Arab, or “Oriental” component. See his “Washington Irving, el romántico que desencadenó la historiografía colombina,” offprint, no publica- tion data. Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid), Biblioteca General, Caja 1–295, No. 33.075. 9. Henry W. Longfellow to Stephen Longfellow, Madrid, March 20, 1827, in The Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, edited by Andrew Hilen, 6 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966–1982), I, p. 222. 10. Irving, various journal entries in March–April, 1827. JWI, III, pp. 57–62. 11. WI to Thomas W. Storrow, Madrid, October 8, 1827, Letters, II, p. 253. 12. Alexander H. Everett secured this permission for Irving from the Spanish Secretary of State. Everett to Manuel Gonzáles Salmón, Madrid, August 19, 1828, in Alexander H. Everett, Prose Pieces and Correspondence, edited by Elizabeth Evans (St. Paul, MN: The John Colet Press, 1975), p. 225. 13. Diary entry of July 9, 1828. WID, p. 42. 14. Various diary entries from August 26 to November 1, 1828. WID, pp. 62–77. 15. WI to Johann Nikolas Böhl von Faber, Puerto de Santa María, November 2, 1828, Letters, II, pp. 354–355. 16. Diary entries of December 30, 31, 1828; January 2, 1829; February, 28, 1829. WID, pp. 89–90, 91, 104. 17. See her “How German Romanticism Travelled to Spain: The Intellectual Journey of Johann Nikolas Böhl von Faber,” The Publications of the English Goethe Society, New Series, vol. LXXI (2001), 78–90. For the larger connection between German and Spanish Romanticism, see her Creating a National Identity: A Comparative Study of German and Spanish Romanticism (Stuttgart: Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz, 1997), and also Derek Flitter, Spanish Romantic Literary Theory and Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 18. Vindicaciones de Calderón y del teatro antiguo contra los afrancesados en la literatura (Cádiz, 1820) and Teatro español anterior a Lope de Vega por el editor de la Floresta de Rimas Antiguas Castellanas (Hamburg: Perthes, 1832). 19. Floresta de Rimas Antiguas Castellanas ordenado por Don Juan Nicolas Böhl de Faber de la Real Academia Española, 3 vols. (Hamburg: Perthes y Besser, 1821–1825). 20. WI to John Nicholas [sic] Böhl, Esq., New York, April 26, 1833. I thank Ramón Bayo of the Grupo Osborne in Puerto de Santa María, Spain, for sending me a copy of the original manuscript of this letter. It is also included in Letters, II, p. 760. NOTES 191 21. WI to Thomas Aspinwall, Cádiz, August 31, 1828, Letters, II, p. 331. 22. WI to Alexander H. Everett, Puerto de Santa María, October 21, 1828, Letters, II, p. 347. 23.Lucretia Orne Everett to William Peabody, Madrid, 6 November 1828, Everett- Peabody family papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. 24. Irving described his visit in a letter to Henry Breevort, Edinburgh, August 28, 1817. Letters, I, pp. 497–498. To his friend Charles Leslie he related how the days he spent with Scott “are counted among the happiest of my life,” WI to Charles Leslie, Liverpool, February 8, 1818, Letters, I, p. 518. Irving stayed in touch with Scott for many years afterward. 25. Henry W. Longfellow to Stephen Longfellow, Trieste, December 27, 1828, Letters, I, p. 288. 26. For the purposes of citation, I use The Works of Washington Irving. Volume (in Roman numerals) and page numbers will henceforth be indicated in parentheses in the text. 27. Irving was well acquainted with Blanco White. While in the midst of writing the Conquest, Irving also met Blanco’s brother Fernando in Seville. “Mr White brother of Blanco White & partner of Mr Beck calls on me.” Diary entry of June 1, 1828, WID, p. 32. 28. In a letter from Granada in 1828, Irving indicated that these events were celebrated in a popular drama named “Ave María.” He stated that “although it has been acted time out of mind, and the people have seen it repeatedly, it never fails to draw crowds, and so completely engross the feelings of the audience, as to have almost the effect on them of reality,” The Works of Washington Irving, X, p. 493. 29. On the use of “character” for understanding nations and cultures in nineteenth- century America, see Richard L. Kagan, “From Noah to Moses: The Genesis of Historical Scholarship on Spain in the United States,” in Spain in America, pp. 21–47. 30. WI to Thomas Aspinwall, Puerto de Santa María, October 22, 1828, Letters, II, p. 348. That he had serious doubts about his story is clear from a letter to his brother. The story of Roderick, he stated, “has been so much harped upon by Scott and Southey as not to possess novelty with literary persons.” WI to Peter Irving, Seville, March 29, 1829, Letters, II, p. 387. 31. On the larger American intellectual attempt to “orientalize” Spain and its people, see María DeGuzmán, Spain’s Long Shadow: The Black Legend, Off-Whiteness, and Anglo- American Empire (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005). 32. Everett’s essay appeared originally in the North American Review (January 1829). It is included in Everett’s Prose Pieces, pp. 50–85. 33. William H. Prescott, “Irving’s Conquest of Granada,” [1829] in Biographical and Critical Miscellanies (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1895), pp. 82–113. For a summary of other, mostly positive reactions, see Claudia L. Bushman, America Discovers Columbus: How an Italian Sailor Became an American Hero (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1992), pp.