With the New York girl who died during their betrothal, with the Scotchborn woman who was too old for him, and the English girl who was too young, there is completed the list of the women who were desired in marriage by Washington Irving. Much more difficult it is to determine who and how many were those who were disappointed at Irving's failure fully to return the affection they felt for him. Madame de Bergh we may dismiss as merely a partner in a casual flirtation. Not so lightly can we pass by Mary Fairlie, Mary Shelley, and Antoinette Bolvillier.

After all manner of news of friends, Mary approaches the conclusion with, "If you write a very long letter I may be again induced to follow your example. If you do not I shall consider it as a hint, that you do not wish to be troubled by me. All our family send their love to you. And Mama particularly requests that you take care of your health." Then, after she has signed herself as "Your Friend, M. Fairlie", Mary adds as a postscript: "Don't you admire this pretty paper

I like it so much that I have been trying, in vain, to leave it, these ten minutes but my pen today has the same propensity that my tongue has, when talking to you, I know not when to have done."

The second Mary to come under the spell of Irving's charm was the daughter of William Godwin, the philosopher, and of Mary Wollstonecraft, a pioneer in the assertion of women's rights. The widow of Percy Bysshe Shelley was twenty eight years old, and Irving

gether in 1824 by John Howard Payne. Payne himself was at the time deeply devoted to Mary Shelley, but losing hope as a suitor for her hand (or for her less formal favors) he seems to have resigned himself to the thought that Irving, to whom he was under obligations and with whom he then was collaborating in dramatic writing, might as well be successful where he had failed. In a mood wherein motives of friendship for Irving and Mary Shelley mingled with other less happy emotions, Payne wrote to Irving of his belief that Mary Shelley had sought him merely as a source of introduction to Irving. While this may be regarded as an overstatement, Mary had told Payne that Irving "had interested her more than anyone she had ever seen since she left Italy"; that he was "gentle and cordial"; and that "she longed for friendship" with him.

But Irving, in 1824, was still caught up in his infatuation with Emily Foster. The situation was much like that which Heine describes in one of his ironic lyrics: Payne was in love with Mary; she, it would seem, with Irving; he with Emily; and Emily was later to marry a fifth.

At Madrid, in 1826 and 1827, where Irving was so industriously engaged on his history of Columbus, the home where he was most often, and very often, a guest was that of the Russian Minister, D'Oubril. Antoinette Bolvillier, Madame D'Oubril's niece, was the most delightful member of the Russian Minister's household, and with her Irving became on terms of really rare friendship. When he left Madrid in the early part of 1828 to spend his re

maining two years in Spain mainly at Seville and Granada, Antoinette received his promise to write to her.

Intelligent and high spirited, Antoinette Bolvillier struck some of the finest chords in Irving's nature, and led him to write, from the sheer point of artistry, the most perfect of his letters. Entering again upon the field of surmise, we venture the opinion that if, with his second great disappointment in love, Irving had not forever renounced the idea of marriage, this girl who was so sympathetic a companion in the Madrid days might have won his enduring affection.

It seems perhaps a cruel thing to say, but I am convinced that if Matilda Hoffman had lived, the man of letters that the world of literature knows as Washington Irving would never have come into being. As the son-in-law of Josiah Hoffman, Irving would in all probability have had a sinecure as a junior partner in a distinguished law firm and later, perhaps through the influence of Hoffman, of Judge Van Ness and of other New Yorkers with voice at Washington, have obtained in early manhood the secretaryship of legation which he unsuccessfully sought during the administration of James Madison. There might, from time to time, have issued some piece of writing from his facile pen, but would there have been that prod of necessity which ultimately forced Irving into the career of an author? Not even the success of "Knickerbocker's History" could stir Irving from the happy, indolent life of a young man about town. It is difficult to say whether his aversion from work or his love for society was more marked in the days of his early manhood; but

in any event he presents the unparalleled case of an author leaving his pen almost unemployed for a period of nine years immediately following the appearance of a phenomenally successful book.

The struggle between his characteristic spirit of independence, and his equally characteristic tendency to underrate his own capacity, was soon to terminate in the first international triumph of an American man of letters. After two months of hesitations and misgivings Irving settled down to the first serious attempt at literary work since his arrival in Europe, and so well did he get on that by the end of the following February he had finished the first number of "The Sketch Book", and had succeeding numbers in partial readiness.

As number after number was issued - first in the United States and then, shortly afterward, in England - the enthusiasm aroused by "Rip Van Winkle", by that universal favorite "The Broken Heart", by "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", grew greater and greater. If Scott was especially delighted with the legend of the Headless Horseman, William Godwin seemed to find most to praise in the essay on "Rural Life in England". "It is, I believe, all true", wrote Godwin; "and one wonders, while reading, that nobody ever said this before." Godwin's praise was the first in that great chorus which was, in 1819, to make Irving famous all over Europe; and the comment that Godwin made Godwin, whose work on political justice was one of the epoch making books of all times - is especially significant of what Irving began, in "The Sketch Book", to

do for England, for English literature, and for the relationship between England and the United States.

One more quotation, and we shall have ended with the memoranda jotted down by Irving during his Vienna days. "Nations", he writes, "are fast losing their nationality. The great and increasing intercourse, the exchange of fashions, the uniformity of opinions by the diffusion of literature are fast destroying those peculiarities that formerly prevailed. We shall in time grow to be very much one people, unless a return of barbarism throws us again into clans." Is there not in this concluding sentence one of the first expressions by an American man of letters of the spirit of internationalism?

A great favorite at court (the Queen on one occasion sent the Master of Ceremonies to bring Irving to her; told him that she had not seen him for a century, and paid him many compliments on "The Sketch Book" which she was then reading in a French translation), he had the royal gardens to walk in. He heard Carl Maria von Weber playing his own music on the piano; he talked with the King of Bavaria about Benjamin Franklin whom the King had known in Paris and whose horse and cabriolet the Bavarian monarch had bought after Franklin's departure; he discussed with the younger princes the future of Europe, with Russia as its vast and dangerous factor. There were gay luncheons at inns and at hunting pavilions; country excursions; sails on little lakes; dinners under trees on the lawn. And through it all the songs and whispers of Madame de Bergh, and the surging music of the heart so deeply stirred by Emily Foster.

The author of "The Sketch Book", his name now honored both in Europe and America, felt some hesitation in entering into the less dignified field of adaptation; but his passion for plays, his entire willingness to add to a purse somewhat depleted by the monetary demands of the unsuccessful steamboat enterprise, and last, but assuredly not least, his desire to be of service to a friend and a countryman more hard pressed than himself, were the determining factors in an acquiescence which included the condition that his participation should remain secret.

While Irving gave advice, and probably more than advice, in connection. with many of the plays that Payne worked upon during the years 1823 and 1824, two of these were very largely his handiwork "Charles II" and "Richelieu". With them we may consider "Abu Hassan" and "The Wild Huntsman" adapted by Irving from the German as the four finished pieces of Irving the playwright. And after that there shall be a glance at the germinal ideas of plays whose writing Irving contemplated but never carried out.

In the following month Irving conceived the plan of a play to be entitled "The Cavalier", and during the following week wrote almost feverishly. After this all trace of the play is lost. Nothing remains of "The Cavalier". But loosely placed between the pages of a diary of that year have been discovered the notes for a play based on a suggestion given to Irving the preceding March by Lord Byron's friend, Captain Medwin. "El Embozado"

- The Cloaked Figure is a drama of the dual nature of man. The plot that Irving worked up from Medwin's note reveals an aristocratic and disso

lute young man who seduces a peasant girl. After having given her love, the girl learns that her hero is engaged to a young noblewoman. She kills herself. The night before the marriage her seducer is carousing with his boon companions. Later, when he is alone, he is confronted by a mantled figure that accuses him for his evil ways; will hear nothing in extenuation; threatens and commands. The spoiled young fellow becomes enraged and is about to attack the stranger when he realizes that the unknown visitor is himself. His other self his better self-stands in the way of his career of riches, happiness, and of cold and selfish vice. But how shall a man get away from himself? The keenest sword cannot cut the strings of conscience; and in Irving's play as later, differently evolved, in Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"

the solution is the hero's death.

Byron is more frequently mentioned in Irving's notebooks of this period than any other writer. Irving's writings delighted Byron, and Thomas Moore had doubtless shown Irving Byron's letter of July, 1821, wherein the English poet had written of his enthusiasm for the writings of "your Mr. Irving". On the other hand, Irving took such pleasure in Byron's poetry that he sent him. the only gift presented to a man whose acquaintance he had never made a copy of "The Sketch Book". He inscribed the first of the two volumes: "Lord Byron with the author's high respect and admiration. Washington Irving, Dresden, May, 1823." The phrase to be noted is "high respect".

From critical and non-critical alike; from the reviewers in the journals and

the boys at college; from royalty and diplomats; from lodging house keepers and country folk; in a word, from the high places and from the byways of English life, praise and affection flowed forth to Washington Irving; and it was as the most affectionately regarded of Americans that he sailed for his native land. The last of his recorded visits to any friends in London was at the home of the Fosters. Did he years after the Dresden offer of marriage – then make the final attempt to bring Emily as his bride across the waters?

The reception given to Irving by his fellow citizens was cordial beyond his most hopeful expectations. He found himself "in a tumult of enjoyment . . . pleased with everything and everybody and as happy as a mortal can be". Seventeen years had gone by since his home town had seen its famous son. Its chief citizens immediately arranged for a public dinner which Irving could not well refuse, although he looked forward to it "with awe", and wrote Peter that he would be "heartily glad when it was over". Doubtless he would have preferred to assume the rôle of the maidservant described by William Irving, a man almost as shy as his younger brother. On the occasion of a large dinner given by her mistress the servant had asked permission to go to bed early on the ground that she did not feel at ease with so much company about.

Although his interest in national politics was quickened by his attendance at Congress in 1833 and by later visits to Washington, Irving continued in his early aloofness from political affairs. His dislike for the grime of politics and his aversion from public

office led him to decline candidacy for Congress during the Jacksonian era; the nomination for the mayoralty of New York City offered him by Tammany Hall in 1838; and, shortly thereafter, the appointment to the secretaryship of the navy under his old friend, Van Buren. Statesmen and fellow citizens were continually trying to honor him, and he was continually trying to escape.

Before his arrival at Madrid as the new American minister, Irving was to have more than three months of welcome and acclaim among many of the most distinguished personages of England and France. The diary wherein he sets down the doings of those days seems entirely to have escaped the attention of Pierre M. Irving and has remained unknown to succeeding biographers.

With Samuel Rogers he went on May fourth to Lady Holland's to her home in South Street where she "keeps up a kind of Holland House on a small scale", her larger establishment in Kensington having been the famous resort of statesmen and men of letters. There he met "Lady Seymour, the Queen of Beauty", and Colonel Charles Fox, "grown stout and grey". Two days later he accompanied Edward Everett to Queen Victoria's levee. . . . Of Victoria and her consort he wrote: "The Queen is pleasing in her appearance and acquits herself with grace and ease; Prince Albert, tall and elegantly formed, bland and prepossessing in countenance and demeanour." He found Victoria "though not decidedly handsome, agreeable and intelligent", and was impressed by the devotion of the young couple to one another.

"It is rare", he wrote, "to see such a union of pure affection on a throne."

Old Samuel Rogers was greatly affected on meeting Irving again. Irving's other friends were no less delighted, Thomas Moore in especial. At the anniversary dinner of the Literary Fund where Prince Albert presided, Sir Robert Inglis and G. P. R. James, the novelist, Lockhart, Lord Lansdowne, and many other Englishmen of prominence joined heartily in the toasts that were drunk to Washington Irving. Irving. Irving sat between Moore and Hallam, laughing with them at the maudlin speech that Thomas Campbell (having indulged too freely in wine) made in Hallam's honor. The next day (May 13), Irving breakfasted with Hallam, where he again met William Wordsworth to whom, a few days before, he had been introduced at a breakfast given by Miss Rogers. Wordsworth, at the age of seventy three, was the next year to become poet laureate, after having arranged with Sir Robert Peel that no official verse should be required of hima stipulation offering evidence that Wordsworth was indeed a poet.