Washington Irving's stories have timeless appeal

By A.M.P. Meisel
For the Poughkeepsie Journal

Softly, you calm the child by explaining that the noise was merely a wonderful strike, for the jolly men in the heavens are bowling again. And, thanks to Washington Irving, you can add a bit of local lore and explain that it is actually renowned explorer Hendrick Hudson’s sailing crew playing ninepin in the mountains.

The value of a good story never diminishes, something Irving knew quite well.

What gives Irving’s stories timeless appeal is largely the Hudson Valley’s vivid backdrop. During his boyhood summers, Irving, who was born in 1783, escaped the confines of New York City for the green spaces of the Hudson Valley and became enchanted with the region. He wrote, in ‘‘The Sketch-Book,’’ that he rambled the countryside, making himself familiar ‘‘with all its places famous in history or fable’’ and with ‘‘every spot where a murder or robbery had been committed, or a ghost seen.’’

So transported was Irving by the Hudson Valley landscape that he sought to capture in words what the Hudson River painters, many of whom were his close friends, sought to capture in oil on canvas. He began his writing career in the early 1800s and is often considered the first American man of letters, known predominantly for his writings in and about the Hudson Valley. But it is clearly more than a ‘‘local color’’ charm that keeps him alive. Irving helped forge the first impressions of an American literary identity.

Helped create an identity

As, arguably, the Hudson Valley’s writer of the millennium, he has done what forklorists and mythmakers of John Henry, Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill have done for the country — helped forge a national, cultural identify rooted here, in the first growth of the new world. Hudson Valley writer and State University of New Paltz professor H.R. Stoneback said, ‘‘Irving felt profoundly — especially after his travels in Europe — the lack of a layered, storied past in America. Of course, it was the early 1800s. It was a new country with no deep sense of the past, no deep sense of place, no legends, no lore, so he set out to create a mythical past.’’

Part of Irving’s mastery was that he localized German and Dutch lore in American tales and legends. He flavored stories like ‘‘Rip Van Winkle’’ with the myth of the Manitou — an American Indian woman who played tricks on hunters in the Catskill Mountains. ‘‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’’ features the account of Revolutionary spy Major Andre’s tortured ghost wandering Tarrytown.

The forefather of American Romanticism, Irving believed nature had the power to inspire the imagination to an almost spiritual realm.

For Irving, the Hudson Valley landscape defied the artifice that the Romantics despised. The image of Rip working his way through ‘‘thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel’’ creates a picture of voluptuous dishevelment.

Perhaps Irving sought hardest to capture this abundance because he sensed the encroachment of progress, namely in the form of the railroad, which ran its tracks through his riverfront estate, Sunnyside in Tarrytown, where he wrote ‘‘The Sketch-book.’’

According to Sunnyside’s historical interpreter, Robert Valentine, Irving once complained that if the Garden of Eden still existed, they would find a way to run a railroad through it. The Hudson Valley was his Eden — railroad or no.

Take the character of Rip Van Winkle, who awakens from a 20-year slumber, walks down from the pristine highlands that have remained unravaged by time, and finds that in the village ‘‘strange names were over the doors — strange faces at the windows — everything was strange.’’

Likewise, Irving depicted the Hudson Valley itself, as a sort of sleeping giant who was just awakening from its youthful dreams. He quotes John Milton’s essay, ‘‘On the Liberty of the Press,’’ to describe the moral and physical development of America as a ‘‘noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep.’’

The Hudson Valley was the proverbial land of opportunity — if one didn’t sleep through it. Irving recognized the Hudson Valley’s fertile farmlands, its strategic business locations, the divine splendor of its banks, its rich history. In the famous opening of ‘‘Rip Van Winkle,’’ Irving stated, ‘‘Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill Mountains — seen to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country.’’ Irving guaranteed that we would never forget.

Stoneback added, ‘‘You know, he used to be called the ‘Father of American Literature’ in the old textbooks. If he was the father, then the good earth of the Hudson Valley and the Catskill Mountains was the Mother of American Literature and Myth.’’

A.M.P. Meisel is a teacher in the Highland Central School District and former adjunct instructor in writing composition at SUNY New Paltz.