Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1859-12-03
G0lortestrr Daily Spp.
From the Independent, Nov. "a.
HALF AN HOUR AT SUNNYsIDE.
AvIsIT TO wAsnINGToN IRVING.


Sunnysde-the residence of Washington Irv-
ing. Such half hour ought to have been one
OF the pleasantest in ones life; and so it was /!
The pleasure began before reaching the door
step, or taking the old mans hand-in the
thousand associations of the pace-for visit
to Sunnyside is equal to a pilgrimage to Abb
botsford.
The quaint grotesque old dwelling, with its
old-tashlOned gables, stood as solemn and
sleepy among the trees as if it had been built
to personate old Rip Van Wrinkle at his nap.
The grounds were covered with brown and
yellow leaves, with here and there a red SPUR
rel running and rustling among them, as if pre-
tending to be the true red-breast that laid the
leaves over the babes in the wood.
The morning had been rainy, and the after
noon showed only a few momentary openings
of clear sky so that saw Sunnyside without
the SUM- But under the heavy clouds there
was something awe-inspiring in the sombre
view of those grand hills with their many
colored forests, and of Hendrix Hudson's an
clsnt river still flowing at the feet of the an
cient palisades.
The mansion of Sunnyside has been stand
ing for twenty three years but when first its
sharp-angled roof wedged its way up among
the branches of the old woods, the region was
far more solitude than now for at that time
most everybody but one near neighbor while
he has since unwittingly gathered around him
little community of New York merchants,
whose elegant country seats, opening into each
other by mutual INTERVIEWING roads, form what
looks like one vast and free estate, called on
the time tables of the railroad by the honorary
name Of lrvington. But even within the
growing circle of his many neighbors, the
genial old Knickerbocker still lives in true re-
tirement, entertaining his guests within echo
distance of Sleepy Hollow-without thought,
and almost without knowledge,
"-how the great world
Is prasing him far off,
He withdrew year ago from all literary la
Dor, and is now spending the close of his life
IN well earned and long-needed repose.
MIR. Irving is not so old-looking as one
would expect who knew his age. | tancied
him in the winter of life found him only in
its Indian summer He came down stairs,
and walked through the hall into the back par
lor with firm and lively step, that might well
have made one doubt whether he had truly at
tanned his seventy-seventh year. He was sui.
terlng from asthma, and was muflled against
the damp air with Scotch shawl, wrapped
like great loose scarf around his neck but
as he took his seat in the old armchair and,
despite his h0arseness and troubled chest, be-
gan an Unexpectedly vivacious conversation,
he made me almost forget that L was the guest
of an old man long past his "three score years
and ten"
But what should one talk about who had
only half an hour with Washington Irving
ventured the question
'Now that you have laid aside your pen,
which of your books do you look upon with
most pleasure 2"
He Immediately replied d scarcely look
with full satisfaction upon any for they do
not seem what then might have been; | often
wish that could have twenty years more, to
take them down from the shelf, one by one,
and write them over"
He spoke of his daily habits of writing, be.
fore he had made the resolution to write no
more. His usual hours for literary work were
from morning till noon. But, although he had
generally found his mind most VIGOROUS in the
early part of the day, he had always been sub
ject to moods and caprices, and could never
tell, when he took up the pen, how many hours
would pass before he would lay it down.
''But," said he, ''these capricious periods, of
the heat and glow of composition, have been
the happiest hours of my life. have never
found, in anything outside of the four walls
ofmy study, any enjoyment equal to sitting at
my writing-desk with clean page, new
theme, and mind awake"
His literary employments, he remarked, had
always been more like entertainments than
tasks.
"Some writer's" said he, "appear to have
been independent of moods. Sir Walter
Scott, for instance had great power of writ
ing, and could work almost at any time so
could Crabbe-but with this difference Scott
always, and Crabbe seldom wrote well" 81
remember" said he, taking breakfast one
morning with Rogers, Moore, and Crabbe
the conversation turned on Lord Byron's po-
etc moods Crabbe said that however it
might be with Lord Byron, as for himself he
could write as well one time as at another"
"But," said Irving, with a twinkle Of humor
at recalling the incident "Crabbe has written
great deal that nobody can read"
He mentioned that while living in Paris he
went a long period without being able to
write. 81 sat down repeatedly" said he,
'with pen and ink, but could invent nothing
worth putting on the paper. AT length l told
my friend Tom Moore, who dropped in one
morning, that now, after long waiting, had
the mood, and would hold it, and work it out
as long as it would last, until had wrung my
brain dry. So began to write shortly after
breakfast, and continued, without noticing how
the time was passing, until Moore came in
again at four in the afternoon-when | had
completely covered the table with freshly
written sheets. l kept the mood almost with
out interruption for six weeks"
Iasked which of his books was the result of
this frenzy; he replied, "Bracebridge Hail."
"None of your works" l remarked, "are
more charming than the Biography of Gold
smith"
"Yet that was written" said he, "even
more rapidly than the other" He then added
"When.I have been engaged on continuous
work, have often been obliged to rise in the
middle of the night light my lamp, and write an
hour or two, to relieve my mind and now
that / write no more, | am sometimes COM
PEELED to get up in the same way to read. p"
Sometimes also, as the last Idlewild letters
mention, he gets up to shave.
"When l was in Span," he remarked,
Searching the old chronicles, and engaged on
the life of Columbus, | often wrote fourteen or
fifteen hours out Of the twenty -four."
He said that whenever he had forced his
mind unwillingly to work, the product was
worthless, and he invariably threw it away and
began again; "for," as he observed, can essay
or chapter that has been only hammered out is
seldom good for anything. An authors right
time to work is when his mind is all aglow-
when his Imagination is kindled these are his
precious moments let him wait until they
come, but when they have come let him make
the most of them.
referred to his last and greatest work, the
Life Of Washington, and asked if he felt, on
finishing it, any such sensation as Gibbon is
said to have experienced over the last sheet of
ahe Decline and Fall. lie replied, that the
whole work had engrossed his mind to such a
degree, that, before he was aware, he had witt
ten himself into feeblencss Of health; that he
feared in the midst of his labor that it would
break him down before he could end it that
when at last the final pages were written, he
gave the manuscript to his nephew TO be con
1untnd thrnnrh the nrnss and throw himself