World of Washington Irving. Van Wyck Brooks.

The World of Washington Irving
Van Wyck Brooks
E.P. Dutton & Company, Inc.
1944

Why read it? To remind Americans of the struggle to define America, whether it would become just another imitation of a European state, or a country in which the people are responsible for its government. To remind Americans of the foundation for the American way of life. The period just beyond the "Declaration of Independence," the Revolutionary War and the Constitution, 1800 to 1840. A new kind of history. Its title is deceptive, yet literal. The book is really about the WORLD of Washington Irving, rather than focusing on Irving himself. This book is about many people of Irving’s time—writers, statesmen, naturalists, explorers and painters—who helped to open the American continent and define the government of America.

The author paints pictures of the times. The details are graphic and vivid. And he’s also a name dropper and a gossiper. Almost anyone you have heard of or have not heard of from that period is in his book, usually accompanied by a brief biographical sketch with details you did not know. In addition to Irving, the following are the names of people and places that Brooks describes in detail in his history of American culture between 1800 and 1840:

Philadelphia; Parson Weems; Thomas Paine; Franklin; Benjamin Rush; Alexander Wilson (ornithologist); the Bartrams; Charles Brockden Brown (early novelist); New Jersey; New York; Lindley Murray (grammarian); Cooper; Freneau; Jefferson; Trumbull; Timothy Dwight; Connecticut; the South; South Carolina; Virginia; John Marshall; the frontier; Lewis and Clark; Paulding; Bryant; Charleston, South Carolina; Alabama; William Gilmore Simms; Poe; Davey Crockett; Schoolcraft (Indian lore); Ohio; the prairie; Andrew Jackson; NP Willis; the Hudson River valley; and Boston, all in preparation for the next volume in Brooks’s series of books, The Flowering of New England.

Many of the ideas of these Americans focused on politics: the enthusiasm of Americans for republics and democracy vs. the European admiration for aristocracy. The Americans of that time knew what America was all about. Americans were “tired of kings.” Between 1800 and 1840 America was defining itself, its people proud of their independence, their differences from European governments and proud of their society and geography. Many a writer of that period wrote travelogues to counter the negative messages about America from European visitors. But the essential political issue was the battle between the Federalists who did not trust the people to run their own government and the Republicans who trusted the people to run their own government. Andrew Jackson, says Brooks, was the successor to Thomas Jefferson.

I found, as a reader, that with Van Wyck Brooks’s style, I would begin to read his sometimes agonizingly long paragraphs and could not stop until the end of the paragraph. His paragraphs flow, uninterrupted, from beginning to end. Just as Emerson’s style was the sentence, Brooks’s style consists of the paragraph, mini-compositions within the chapters.

Brooks creates a tapestry of people, scenes, and ideas that help the reader to understand the culture of America between the 1800s and the 1840s. The struggle between the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, who wanted to make America a duplicate of Europe and the lovers of the republic, led by Jefferson, who looked to establishing a republic. In those years, the direction of our government had not been finally decided.

Some sample ideas from the book:

Charles Brockden Brown in Alcuin defended the new-fangled notion that women had rights of their own. “He [Charles Brockden Brown] was given to long solitary walks in shades and dells, frequenting the wild banks of the Schuylkill and the Wissahickon, where the mansion of Wieland stood in his novel.” Many images in Charles Brockden Brown’s novels reappeared in Poe’s tales. Brockden Brown: True horrors of the mind; analyzed human emotions, explored the inner world of man. Precursor of Poe, Melville, Hawthorne and Henry James. Brockden Brown: “…one of those who would rather travel into the mind of a ploughman than into the interior of Africa.”

“Cooper…described this life in The Pioneers and so described a thousand towns that were springing into existence on all the frontiers.” Cooper: “Personally and socially aristocratic in all his tastes and instincts, he was a democrat politically against all comers, and he even disliked the toryism in the novels of Sir Walter Scott, its deference to hereditary rank and conventional laws.” Cooper’s “…novels defended the rule of the people against irresponsible oligarchies who questioned the capacity of men to govern themselves. They showed the evil of institutions that thrive on the ignorance of the masses and had no proper base in the will of the nation.” Cooper, meanwhile, would have gone to the stake for his democratic principles, but he found little to please him in a democratic age, and, face to face with the speculators and the demagogues and the nouveaux riches, he was filled with regrets and longings for the days of the patroons.”

“…he [Crockett] won his election to Congress…by telling a few good stories, after letting the other candidates wear out the crowd with oratory.” “As late as 1815, the President’s wife was called ‘her majesty.’ ” “The Federalists—‘traitors to human hope’—cared only for ‘good government’ and ignored the people.” “The Federalists perpetuated European forms; the Republicans devised and developed forms that sprang from the habits and history of the American people. They represented new men in a new world.” “His [Jefferson’s] new republic was a secession from the time-worn categories, kings, nobles, priests, burghers, artisans and peasants; and it placed life on a new basis by affirming that ‘a man’s a man’ and that the pursuit of happiness was every man’s right. Now, much of this was old in theory, but what government had ever tried to carry it out in practice?”

“Meanwhile, the Hudson river valley and all the country about New York teemed with the legends of the Dutch…. All these legends had been long current when Washington Irving, in 1800, made his first voyage up the Hudson…. On board, the long days lent themselves to story telling and the captains were renowned for their yarns.” “He [Irving] felt, as he looked back on this dreamy sojourn [at the Alhambra] as if he had lived in the midst of an Arabian tale; and, what with the perfume of the flowers and the murmur of the fountains, the softness of the air, the serenity, the silence, he could scarcely work at first in the ruined old palace.”

Quote: “For this was an age of letter-writing, preeminently so, and the sexes were equally accomplished in the epistolary art. Many novels were written in the form of letters….the highest of female accomplishments was to write a fine letter…. Aaron Burr excelled in the letters he wrote to his daughter, largely to instruct her in letter-writing.”

Quote: “There was no one like Mike Fink for dodging snags, bark, islands of driftwood or for mastering the wild cross-currents of the Mississippi. He was the forerunner of the race of river pilots whom Mark Twain was to celebrate in after days.”

Quotes: Thomas Paine in Common Sense: “…proclaimed that the cause of America was the cause of mankind.” “…Paine, in The Rights of Man, attacked the assumptions of hereditary government.” Thomas Paine, Joel Barlow had prophesied, “…the Americans would have forgotten how much they owed to Paine and would take him for an atheist and a drunkard. Indeed he was taken for little or nothing else. In these fifteen years the mind of the country had changed in many ways, and he might have been another Rip van Winkle.” “…the bustling new commercial world cared little for the ideas of ’76.” “Thus, unhonored, lived the man of whom Benjamin Franklin had said that, while others could rule and many could fight, ‘only Paine could write for us.’ ”