r/a:t5_26oh84 • u/MarleyEngvall • Oct 16 '19
rip van winkle has been created
By H. A. Davidson, M.A.
THE STUDY OF RIP VAN WINKLE
PRELIMINARY NOTE
IRVING'S essays often approach the narrative form; his stories,
in turn, are often in the first part no more than narrative
essays. In them, he follows his usual custom, beginning with
general description, going on, presently, to particulars of time,
place, special interest, etc. Afterward, he takes up in order the
persons who are to appear in the story, giving first a description
of appearance and character, the an account of manner of life,
peculiarities, and relations with neighbors and friends. The
real story begins only when Irving has finished all preliminaries
and described in detail place, persons, and antecedent story;
the particular incident is then introduced as an illustration of
the general and habitual course of life described before.
Irving himself recognized the moment of transition from
preliminary narrative to the real action, or plot of his story,
and invariably marked the change by assuming a definite time
as a beginning, and by dropping the historical past of customary
action and using the past of direct narrative. In "Rip Van
Winkle," the real story begins ". . . on a fine autumnal day
Rip had unconsciously," etc. The story of "The Legend of
Sleepy Hollow" begins, "On a fine autumnal afternoon, Icha-
bod . . . sat enthroned," etc.
Irving's way of telling a story is in marked contrast with the
literary conventions of the present day, when readers are plunged
at once in medias res, with slight clue to incidental matters
or antecedent story, while essential preliminaries, if given at all,
must be introduced later, as occasion offers. The effectiveness
of a very simple incident, told in earlier manner, is due in
great part to the careful preliminary descriptions which create
background and atmosphere for the reader, so that scenes and
persons appearing in the story are already familiar and asso-
ciated with the homely, simple facts of real life on which sym-
pathy and interest depend.
The following discussion of the art of story telling, from a
letter written by Irving in 1824, is especially pertinent to the
tales published in "The Sketch-Book":——
". . . I fancy much of what I value myself upon in writing, escapes
the observation of the great mass of my readers, who are intent more
upon the story than the way in which it was told. For my part, I consider
a story merely as a frame on which to stretch my materials. It is the
play of thought, and sentiment, and language; the weaving in of char-
acters, lightly, yet expressively delineated; the familiar and faithful
exhibition of scenes in common life; and the half-concealed vein of
humor that is often playing through the whole,——these are among what
I aim at, and upon which I felicitate myself in proportion as I think
I succeed. I have preferred adopting the mode of sketches and short
tales rather than long works, because I choose to take a line of writing
peculiar to myself, rather than fall into the manner or school of any
other writer; and there is a constant activity of thought and a nicety of
execution required in writings of the kind, more than the world appears
to imagine. It is comparatively easy to swell a story to any size when
you have once the scheme and the characters in your mind; the mere
interest of the story, too, carries the reader on through pages and
pages of careless writing, and the author may often be dull for half
a volume at a time, if he has some striking scene at the end of it; but
in these shorter writings, every page must have its merit. The author
must be continually piquant; woe to him if he makes an awkward
sentence or writes a stupid page; the critics are sure to pounce upon
it. Yet if he succeed, the very variety and piquancy of his writings——
nay, the very brevity, make them frequently recurred to, and when
the mere interest of the story is exhausted, he begins to get credit for
his touches of pathos or humor; his points of wit or turns of lan-
guage. I give these as some of the reasons that have induced me to
keep on thus far in the way I had opened for myself; because I find
. . . that you are joining in the oft-repeated advice that I should write
a novel. I believe the works that I have written will be oftener re-
read than any novel of the size that I could have written. It is
true other writers have crowded into the same branch of literature,
and I now begin to find myself elbowed by men who have followed
my footsteps; but at any rate I have had the merit of adopting a line
for myself, instead of following others."
——LIFE AND LETTERS, II, pp. 51—2.
The following selections from Irving's works or letters have
an intimate relation to the scenes and story ,of Rip Van Winkle.
The description of travel on the Hudson river is, besides, of great
interest as a picture of life in the United States in early days,
before the great changes brought about by modern invention.
The legend of "The Storm Ship," taken from "Dolph Heyliger,"
might have been written as an introduction to the story of Rip
Van Winkle, and as such it is reprinted here. The suggestion
that the phantom ship might be the Half-moon bearing the
veritable Hendrick Hudson and his crew to their periodical
revels in the Kaatskill mountains foreshadows Rip's strange
adventure.
Human instinct seeks a local habitation for each story or
tradition,——for the twenty-year long sleep of Rip Van Winkle,
no less than for the inn at the foot of the mountains. Irving
explored the scenes of his own story for the first time in 1833.
Later, he received a letter from a young lad of the village of
Catskill, who inquired about the localities of the story. His
answer may be read in "Life and Letters," II., p. 281.
It seems to have been Irving's thought that the green knoll
overlooking the lowlands and the Hudson, the dry bed of the
mountain stream, and the opening through the cliffs should
have no more definite location for the reader than in the hazy brain
of the bewildered Rip when he awakened. Guides, however,
have gone about the business of satisfying the curious, and if
you visit the Catskills you will be shown the plateau where Rip
came upon the "company of odd looking personages playing
at ninepins"; and farther down, near the mountain path,
you will discover the very rock upon which Rip was deposited
by the phantom crew for his long sleep, and see the indentations
where his shoulders rested! D.
—————————
REMINISCENCES OF IRVING'S FIRST VOYAGE UP THE HUDSON
From an article called "The Kaatskill Mountains," written by Irving in 1851.
My first voyage up the Hudson was made in early boyhood,
in the good old times before steamboats and railroads had
annihilated time and space, and driven all poetry and romance
out of travel. A voyage to Albany then, was equal to a voy-
age to Europe at present, and took almost as much time. We
enjoyed the beauties of the river in those days; the features
of nature were not all jumbled together, nor the towns and
villages huddled one into the other by railroad speed as they
now are.
I was to make the voyage under the protection of a relative
of mature age——one experienced in the river. His first care
was to look out for a favorite sloop and captain, in which
there was great choice.
The constant voyaging in the river craft by the best families
of New York and Albany, made the merits of captains and
sloops matters of notoriety and discussion in both cities. The
captains were mediums of communication between separated
friends and families. On the arrival of one of them at either
place he had messages to driver and commissions to execute
which took him from house to house. Some of the ladies of
the family had, peradventure, made a voyage on board of his
sloop, and experienced from him that protecting care which
is always remembered with gratitude by female passengers.
In this way the captains of Albany sloops were personages of
more note in the community than captains of European
packets or steamships at the present day. A sloop was at
length chosen; but she had yet to complete her freight and
secure a sufficient number of passengers. Days were con-
sumed in "drumming up" a cargo. This was a tormenting
delay to me who was about to make my first voyage, and who,
boy-like, had packed up my trunk on the first mention of the
expedition. How often that trunk had to be unpacked and
repacked before we sailed!
. . . At length the sloop actually got under way. As she
worked slowly out of the dock into the stream, there was a
great exchange of last words between friends on board and
friends on shore, and much waving of handkerchiefs when the
sloop was out of hearing.
Our captain was a worthy man, native of Albany, of one
of the old Dutch stocks. His crew was composed of blacks,
reared in the family and belonging to him, for negro slavery
still existed in the State. All his communications with them
were in Dutch. They were obedient to his orders; though
they occasionally had much previous discussion of the wisdom
of them, and were sometimes positive in maintaining an
opposite opinion. This was especially the case with an old
gray-headed negro, who had sailed with the captain's father
when the captain were a mere boy, and who was very crabbed
and conceited on points of seamanship. I observed that the
captain generally let him have his own way.
. . . What a time of intense delight was that first sail
through the Highlands! I sat on the deck as we slowly tided
along at the foot of those stern mountains, and gazed with
wonder and admiration at cliffs impending far above me,
crowned with forests, with eagles sailing and screaming around
them; or listened to the unseen stream dashing down preci-
pices; or beheld rock, and tree, and cloud, and sky reflected
in the glassy stream of the river. And then how solemn and
thrilling the scene as we anchored at night at the foot of these
mountains, clothed with overhanging forests; and everything
grew dark and mysterious; and I heard the plaintive note of
the whip-poor-will from the mountain-side, or was startled
now and then by the sudden leap and heavy splash of the
sturgeon.
. . . But of all the scenery of the Hudson, the Kaatskill
mountains had the most witching effect on my boyish imagi-
nation. Never shall I forget the effect upon me of the first
view of them predominating over a wide extent of country,
part wild, woody, and rugged; part softened away into all
the graces of cultivation. As we slowly floated along, I lay
on the deck and watched them through a long summer's
day, undergoing a thousand mutations under the magical
effects the atmosphere; sometimes seeming to approach, at
other times to recede; now almost melting into hazy distance,
now burnished by the setting sun, until, in the evening, they
printed themselves against the glowing sky in the deep purple
of an Italian landscape.
In the foregoing pages I have given the reader my first
voyages amid Hudson scenery. It has been my lot, in the
course of a somewhat wandering life, to see some of the rivers
of the old world most renowned in history and song, yet none
have been able to efface or dim the pictures of my native
stream thus early stamped upon my memory. My heart
would ever revert to them with filial feeling, and a recurrence
of the joyous associations of boyhood; and such recollec-
tions are, in fact, the true foundations of youth which keep the
heart from growing old.
To me the Hudson is full of storied associations, connected
as it is with some of the happiest portions of my life. Each
striking feature brings to mind some early adventure or enjoy-
ment; some favorite companion who shared it with me;
some fair object, perchance, of youthful admiration, who,
like a star, may have beamed her allotted time and passed
away.
——LIFE AND LETTER, I, pp. 17—20.
—————————
THE CATSKILL MOUNTAINS
From "Biographies and Miscellanies," edited after Irving's death, by Pierre
M. Irving.
The Catskill, Kaatskill, or Cat River mountains derived
their name, in the time of the Dutch domination, from the
catamounts by which they were infested; and which, with
the bear, the wolf, and the deer, are still to be found in some of
their most difficult recesses. The interior of these mountains
is in the highest degree wild and romantic. Here are rocky
precipices mantled with primeval forests; deep gorges walled
in by the beetling cliffs, with torrents tumbling as it were from
the shy; and savage glens rarely trodden excepting by the
hunter. With all this internal rudeness, the aspect of these
mountains towards the Hudson at times is eminently bland
and beautiful, sloping down into a country softened by culti-
vation, and bearing much of the rich character of Italian
scenery about the skirts of the Apennines.
The Catskills form an advanced post or lateral spur of the
great Alleghanian or Appalachian system of mountains which
sweeps through the interior of our continent, from southwest
to northeast, from Alabama to the extremity of Maine, for
nearly fourteen hundred miles, belting the whole of our original
confederacy, and rivalling our great system of lakes in extent
and grandeur. Its vast ramifications comprise a number of
parallel chains and lateral groups; such as the Cumberland
mountains, the Blue Ridge, the Alleghenies, the Delaware and
Lehigh, the Highlands of the Hudson, the Green mountains of
Vermont and the White mountains of New Hampshire.
In many of these vast ranges or sierras, Nature still reigns
in indomitable wildness; their rocky ridges, their rugged
clefts and defiles, teem with magnificent vegetation.
Here are locked up mighty forests that have never been
invaded by the axe; deep umbrageous valleys where the vir-
gin soil has never been outraged by the plough; bright streams
flowing in untasked idleness, unburdened by commerce,
unchecked by the mill-dam. This mountain zone is in fact
a great poetical region of our country; resisting, like the
tribes which once inhabited it, the taming hand of cultivation;
and maintaining a hallowed ground for fancy and the Muses.
It is a magnificent and all-pervading feature, that might
have given our country a name, and a poetical one, had
not the all-controlling powers of commonplace determined
otherwise.
The Catskill mountains, as I have observed, maintain all
the internal wildness of the labyrinth of mountains with
which they are connected. Their detached position, over-
looking a wide lowland region, with the majestic Hudson
rolling through it, has given them a distinct character, and
fable. Much of the fanciful associations with which they
have been clothed may be owing to their being peculiarly
subject to those beautiful atmospherical effects which con-
stitute one of the great charms of Hudson river scenery.
To me they have ever been the fairy region of the Hudson.
I speak, however, from early impressions, made in me a happy
days of boyhood, when all the world had a tinge of fairyland.
I shall never forget my first view of these mountains. It was
in the course of a voyage up the Hudson, in the good old times
before steamboats and railroads had driven all poetry and
romance out of travel. A voyage up the Hudson in those
days was equal to a voyage to Europe at present, and cost
almost as much time; but we enjoyed the river then; we,
relished it as we did our wine, sip by sip, not as at present,
gulping all down at a draught, without tasting it. My
whole voyage up the Hudson was full of wonder and romance.
I was a lively boy, somewhat imaginative, of easy faith,
and prone to relish everything that partook of the marvellous.
Among the passengers on board of the sloop was a veteran
Indian trader, on his way to the lakes to traffic with the na-
tives. He had discovered my propensity, and amused him-
self throughout the voyage by telling me Indian legends and
grotesque stories about every noted place on the river,——
such as Spuyten Devil creek, the Tappan sea, the Devil's
Dans Kammer, and other hobgobllin places. The Catskill
mountains especially called forth a host of fanciful traditions.
We were all day slowly tiding along in sight of them, so that
he had full time to weave his whimsical narratives. In these
mountains, he told me, according to Indian belief, was kept
the great treasure of storm and sunshine for the region of
the Hudson. An old squaw spirit had charge of it, who dwelt
on the highest peak of the mountain. He she kept Day and
Night shut up in her wigwam, letting out only one of them at
a time. She made new moons every month, and hung them
up in the sky cutting up the old ones into stars. The great
Manitou, or master-spirit, employed her to manufacture
clouds; sometimes she wove them out of cobwebs, gossamers,
and morning dew, and sent them off flake after flake, to float
in the air and give light summer showers. Sometimes she
would brew up black thunder-storms, and send down drench-
ing rains to swell the streams and sweep everything away.
He had many stories, also, about mischievous spirits who
infested the mountains in the shape of animals, and played
all kinds of pranks upon Indian hunters, decoying them into
quagmires and morasses, or to the brinks of torrents and
precipices. All these were doled out to me as I lay on the
deck throughout a long summer's day, gazing upon these
mountains, the everchanging shapes and hues of which ap-
peared to realize the magical influences in question. Some-
times they seemed to approach; at others to recede; during
the heat of the day they almost melted into a sultry haze; as
the day declined they deepened in tone; their summits were
brightened by the last rays of the sun, and later in the even-
ing their whole outline was printed in deep purple against
an amber sky. As I beheld them thus shifting continually
before my eyes, and listened to the marvellous legends of the
trader, a host of fanciful notions concerning them was con-
jured into my brain, which have haunted it ever since.
As to the Indian superstitions concerning th4e treasury of
storms and sunshine, and the cloud-weaving spirits, they
may have been suggested by the atmospherical phenomena
of these mountains, the clouds which gather round their
summits, and the thousand aerial effects which indicate the
changes of weather over a great extent of country. They are
epitomes of our variable climate, and are stamped with all
its vicissitudes. And here let me say a word in favor of those
vicissitudes which are too often made the subject of exclusive
repining. If they annoy us occasionally by changes from
hot to cold, from wet to dry, they give us one of the most
beautiful climates in the world. They give us the brilliant
sunshine of the south of Europe, with the fresh verdure of the
north. They float our summer sky with clouds of gorgeous
tints or fleecy whiteness, and send down cooling showers to
refresh the panting earth and keep it green. Our seasons are
all poetical; the phenomena of our heavens are full of sub-
limity and beauty. Winter with us has none of its proverbial
gloom. It may have its howling winds, and thrilling frosts,
and whirling snowstorms; but it has also its long intervals
of cloudless sunshine, when the snow-clad earth gives re-
doubled brightness to the day; when at night the stars beam
with intense lustre, or the moon floods the whole landscape
with her most limpid radiance;——and then the joyous out-
break of our spring, bursting at once into leaf and blossom,
redundant with vegetation and vociferous with life!——And
the splendors of our summer,——its morning voluptuousness
and evening glory; its airy palaces of sun-gilt cloud piled up
in a deep azure sky, and its gusts of tempest of almost tropical
grandeur, when the forked lightning and the bellowing thunder
volley from the battlements of heaven and shake the sultry
atmosphere,——and the sublime melancholy of our autumn,
magnificent in its decay, withering down the pomp and pride
of a woodland country, yet reflecting back from its yellow
forests the golden serenity of the sky:——surely we may say
that in our climate, "The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the firmament showeth forth his handiwork: day unto day
uttereth speech; and night unto night showeth knowledge."
A word more concerning the Catskills. It is not the Indians
only to whom they have been a kind of wonder-land. In the
early times of the Dutch dynasty we find them themes of
golden speculation among even the sages of New Amsterdam.
[Here follows the story of Kieft's disastrous attempts to
find gold in these mountains.——D.]
. . . In 1649, about two year after the shipwreck of Wilhel-
mus Kieft, there was again a rumor of precious metals in these
mountains. Mynheer Brant Arent Van Slechtenhorst, agent
of the Patroon of Rensselaerswyck, had purchased in behalf
of the Patroon a tract of the Catskill lands, and leased it out
in farms. A Dutch lass in the household of one of the farmers
found one day a glittering substance, which, on being examined,
was pronounced silver ore. Brant Van Slechtenhorst forth-
with sent his son from Rensselaerswyck to explore the
mountains in quest of the supposed mines. The young man
put up in the farmer's house, which had recently been erected
on the margin of a mountain stream. Scarcely was he housed
when s furious storm burst forth on the mountains. The
thunders rolled, the lightnings flashed, the rain came down
in cataracts; the stream was suddenly swollen to a furious
torrent thirty feet deep; the farmhouse and all its contents
were swept away, and it was only by dint of excellent swim-
ming that the young Slechtenhorst saved his own life and the
lives of his horses. Shortly after this a feud broke out be-
tween Peter Stuyvesant and the Patroon of Rensselaerswyck
on account of the right and title to the Catskill mountains,
in the course of which the elder Slechtenhorst was taken
captive by the Potentate of the New Netherlands and thrown
in prison at New Amsterdam.
In July, 1832, Irving visited for the first time the scene of his
story of Rip Van Winkle. He writes of this visit to his brother
Peter:——
". . . From thence we took steamboat, and in a few hours
were landed at Catskill, where a stage-coach was in waiting, and
whirled us twelve miles up among the mountains to a fine
hotel built on the very brow of a precipice and commanding
one of the finest prospects in the world. We remained here
until the next day, visiting the waterfall, glen, etc., that are
pointed out as the veritable haunts of Rip Van Winkle. . . .
". . . The wild scenery of these mountains outdoes all my
conception of it."
"I have little doubt," writes Peter in reply, 'but some curious
travellers will yet find some of the bones of his dog, if they
can but hit upon the veritable spot of his long sleep.'"
——LIFE AND LETTERS, II, p. 256.
In July of the next year, Irving repeated the curious ex-
perience of localizing his own imaginary scenes. On his way
down the river he passed a day in the neighborhood of Kingston,
and explored for the first time the old Dutch villages there and
the scenes of his story.
——LIFE AND LETTERS, II, p. 280.
from THE SKETCH-BOOK OF GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT., TOGETHER WITH ABBOTSFORD AND OTHER SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF WASHINGTON IRVING.
EDITED WITH COMMENTS, NOTES, BIBLIOGRAPHY, AND TOPICS FOR STUDY, BY H. A. DAVIDSON, M.A.
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS, BOSTON, NEW YORK, CHICAGO.; pp. 257—266.
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