From a letter
to Henry Brevoort, December 11, 1824.
Reprinted here from The Life and
Letters of Washington Irving, condensed editions, ed. Pierre M. Irving (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1869). 11.
64-65.
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 is 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 characters, 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, their 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
language. 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 . . .
From the
author’s preface to Tales of a Traveller,
1824. Reprinted here from The Works
of Washington Irving, new edition, revised (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1860).
. . . As I know this to be a story-telling and a
story-reading age, and that the world is fond of being taught by apologue, I
have digested the instruction I would convey into a number of tales. They may not possess the power of amusement,
which the tales told by many of my contemporaries possess; but then I value
myself on the sound moral which each of them contains. This may not be apparent at first, but the
reader will be sure to find it out in the end.
I am for curing the world by gentle alternatives, not by violent doses;
indeed, the patient should never be conscious that he is taking a dose. I have learnt this much from experience under
the hands of the worthy Hippocrates of Mentz.
I am not, therefore, for those barefaced tales which carry
their moral on the surface, staring one in the face; they are enough to deter
the squeamish reader. On the contrary, I
have often hid my moral from sight, and disguised it as much as possible by
sweets and spices, so that while the simple reader is listening with open mouth
to a ghost or a love story, he may have a bolus of sound morality popped down
his throat, and be never the wiser for the fraud. . . .
For Study and
Discussion
1.
What does Irving mean by calling the story “a
frame on which to stretch my materials”?
2.
On what grounds does Irving defend his
preference for writing stories rather than novels? Is his argument still valid?
3.
What is Irving’s attitude toward the practice of
moralizing in fiction? Is he being
serious or ironic in saying that each of his tales contains a “sound
moral”? How do you know? What moral, if any, do you find disguised by
means of “sweets and spices” in “The Spectre Bridegroom”?
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