Book: Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862

V >> Various >> Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862




In 1809, Mr. Hoffman removed to a suburban residence in Broadway,
(corner of Leonard street,) and the frequent walks which the young lover
took up that sequestered avenue may have suggested some of the
descriptions of the same street in the pages of the _History of
New-York_, and his allusions to the front-gardens so adapted to ancient
courtship. While at this mansion, amid all the blandishments of hope,
Matilda's health began to fail beyond the power of restoratives, and the
anxious eye both of parent and betrothed, marked the advance of
relentless disease. The maiden faded away from their affections until
both stood by her bed and saw her breathe her last.

The biographer informs us that after Mr. Irving's death, there was found
in a repository of which he always kept the key, a memorial of this
affair, which had evidently been written to some friend, in explanation
of his single life. Of the memorial the following extract is given:

'We saw each other every day, and I became excessively attached to
her. Her shyness wore off by degrees. The more I saw of her the
more I had reason to admire her. Her mind seemed to unfold itself
leaf by leaf, and every time to discover new sweetness. Nobody knew
her so well as I, for she was generally timid and silent, but I, in
a manner, studied her excellence. Never did I meet more intuitive
rectitude of mind, more native delicacy, more exquisite propriety
in word, thought, or action, than in this young creature. I am not
exaggerating; what I say was acknowledged by all who knew her. Her
brilliant little sister used to say that people began by admiring
her, but ended by loving Matilda. For my part, I idolized her. I
felt at times rebuked by her superior delicacy and purity, as if I
was a coarse, unworthy being, in comparison.

'This passion was terribly against my studies. I felt my own
deficiency, and despaired of ever succeeding at the bar. I could
study any thing else rather than law, and had a fatal propensity to
belles-lettres. I had gone on blindly like a boy in love, but now
I began to open my eyes and be miserable. I had nothing in purse or
in expectation. I anticipated nothing from my legal pursuits, and
had done nothing to make me hope for public employment, or
political elevation. I had begun a satirical and humorous work,
(_The History of New-York_,) in company with one of my brothers;
but he had gone to Europe shortly after commencing it, and my
feelings had run in so different a vein that I could not go on with
it. I became low-spirited and disheartened, and did not know what
was to become of me. I made frequent attempts to apply myself to
the law; but it is a slow and tedious undertaking for a young man
to get into practice, and I had, unluckily, no turn for business.
The gentleman with whom I studied saw the state of my mind. He had
an affectionate regard for me--a paternal one, I may say. He had a
better opinion of my legal capacity than it merited. He urged me to
return to my studies, to apply myself, to become well acquainted
with the law, and that in case I could make myself capable of
undertaking legal concerns, he would take me into partnership with
him and give me his daughter. Nothing could be more generous. I set
to work with zeal to study anew, and I considered myself bound in
honor not to make farther advances with the daughter until I should
feel satisfied with my proficiency with the law. It was all in
vain. I had an insuperable repugnance to the study; my mind would
not take hold of it; or rather, by long despondency had become for
the time incapable of any application. I was in a wretched state of
doubt and self-distrust. I tried to finish the work which I was
secretly writing, hoping it would give me reputation and gain me
some public employment. In the mean time I saw Matilda every day,
and that helped distract me. In the midst of this struggle and
anxiety, she was taken ill with a cold. Nothing was thought of it
at first, but she grew rapidly worse, and fell into a consumption.
I can not tell you what I suffered. The ills that I have undergone
in this life have been dealt out to me drop by drop, and I have
tasted all their bitterness. I saw her fade rapidly away--beautiful
and more beautiful, and more angelic to the very last. I was often
by her bedside, and in her wandering state of mind she would talk
to me with a sweet, natural, and affecting eloquence that was
overpowering. I saw more of the beauty of her mind in that
delirious state than I had ever known before. Her malady was rapid
in its career, and hurried her off in two months. Her
dying-struggles were painful and protracted. For three days and
nights I did not leave the house, and scarcely slept. I was by her
when she died. All the family were assembled around her, some
praying, others weeping, for she was adored by them all. I was the
last one she looked upon. I have told you as briefly as I could,
what, if I were to tell with all the incidents and feelings that
accompanied it, would fill volumes. She was but seventeen years old
when she died.

'I can not tell you what a horrid state of mind I was in for a long
time. I seemed to care for nothing; the world was a blank to me. I
abandoned all thoughts of the law. I went into the country, but
could not bear solitude, yet could not enjoy society. There was a
dismal horror continually on my mind that made me fear to be alone.
I had often to get up in the night and seek the bedroom of my
brother, as if the having of a human being by me would relieve me
from the frightful gloom of my own thoughts.

'Months elapsed before my mind would resume any tone, but the
despondency I had suffered for a long time in the course of this
attachment, and the anguish that attended its final catastrophe,
seemed to give a turn to my whole character, and threw some clouds
into my disposition, which have ever since hung about it. When I
became more calm and collected, I applied myself, by way of
occupation, to the finishing of my work. I brought it to a close as
well as I could, and published it; but the time and circumstances
in which it was produced rendered me always unable to look upon it
with satisfaction. Still, it took with the public, and gave me
celebrity, as an original work was something remarkable and
uncommon in America. I was noticed, caressed, and for a time
elevated by the popularity I had gained. Wherever I went, I was
overwhelmed with attentions. I was full of youth and animation, far
different from the being I now am, and I was quite flushed with
this early taste of public favor. Still, however, the career of
gayety and notoriety soon palled upon me. I seemed to drift about
without aim or object, at the mercy of every breeze; my heart
wanted anchorage. I was naturally susceptible, and tried to form
other attachments, but my heart would not hold on. It would
continually revert to what it had lost; and whenever there was a
pause in the hurry of novelty and excitement, I would sink into
dismal dejection. For years I could not talk on the subject of this
hopeless regret; I could not even mention her name; but her image
was continually before me, and I dreamed of her incessantly.'

The fragment of which the above is an extract, is doubly interesting as
not only clearing up a mystery which the world has long desired to
penetrate, but also as giving Irving's experience in his own words. It
proves how deeply he felt the pangs of a rooted sorrow, and how
impossible it was, amid all the attractions of society, for him to
escape the power of one who had bidden to all earthly societies an
everlasting farewell. That his regrets over his early bereavement did
not arise from overwrought dreams of excellence in the departed, is
evident from the character she bore with others; and this is illustrated
by the following extract from a faded copy of the _Commercial
Advertiser_, which reads as follows:

'OBITUARY,

'Died, on the 26th instant, in the eighteenth year of her age, Miss
Sarah Matilda Hoffman, daughter of Josiah Ogden Hoffman. Thus
another youthful and lovely victim is added to the ravages of that
relentless and invincible enemy to earthly happiness, the
_consumption_. In the month of January we beheld this amiable and
interesting girl in the glow of health and spirits, the delight of
her friends, the joy and pride of her family; she is now cold and
lifeless as the clod of the valley. So falls the tender flower of
spring as it expands its bosom to the chilling blight of the
morning frost. Endowed by nature with a mind unusually
discriminating, and a docility of temper and disposition admirably
calculated to reap profit from instruction, Miss Hoffman very early
became an object of anxious care and solicitude to the fondest of
fathers. That care and solicitude he soon found richly rewarded by
the progress she made in her learning, and by every evidence of a
grateful and feeling heart. After completing the course of her
education in a highly respectable seminary in Philadelphia, she
returned to her father's house, where she diligently sought every
opportunity to improve her mind by various and useful reading. She
charmed the circle of her friends by the suavity of her disposition
and the most gentle and engaging manners. She delighted and blessed
her own family by her uniformly correct and affectionate conduct.
Though not formed to mingle and shine in the noisy haunts of
dissipation, she was eminently fitted to increase the store of
domestic happiness, to bring pleasure and tranquillity to the
fireside, and to gladden the fond heart of a parent.

'Religion, so necessary to our peace in this world and to our
happiness in the next, and which gives so high a lustre to the
charms and to the virtues of woman, constantly shed her benign
influence over the conduct of Miss Hoffman, nor could the insidious
attempts of the infidel for a moment weaken her confidence in its
heavenly doctrines. With a form rather slender and fragile was
united a beauty of face, which, though not dazzling, had so much
softness, such a touching sweetness in it, that the expression
which mantled over her features was in a high degree lovely and
interesting. Her countenance was indeed the faithful image of a
mind that was purity itself, and of a heart where compassion and
goodness had fixed their abode. To the sweetest disposition that
ever graced a woman, was joined a sensibility, not the fictitious
creature of the imagination, but the glowing offspring of a pure
and affectionate soul.

'Tenderness, that quality of the heart which gives such a charm to
every female virtue, was hers in an eminent degree. It diffused
itself over every action of her life. Sometimes blended with a
delicate and happy humor, characteristic of her nature, it would
delight the social circle; again, with the most assiduous offices
of affection, it would show itself at the sick couch of a parent, a
relative, or a friend. In this manner the writer of this brief
memorial witnessed those soothing acts of kindness which, under
peculiar circumstances, will ever be dear to his memory. Alas!
little did she then dream that in one short year she herself would
fall a sacrifice to the same disease under which the friend to whom
she so kindly ministered, sunk to the grave.'

This testimony to departed worth bears the impress of deep sincerity,
and its freedom from the fulsome praise, which so often varnishes the
dead, seems to add to its force. Peter Irving, also, pays a tribute to
her character in the following utterance, in a letter to his bereaved
brother: 'May her gentle spirit have found that heaven to which it ever
seemed to appertain. She was too spotless for this contaminated world.'

The biographer states that 'Mr. Irving never alluded to this event, nor
did any of his relatives ever venture in his presence to introduce the
name of Matilda,' 'I have heard,' he adds, 'of but one instance in which
it was ever obtruded upon him, and that was by her father, nearly thirty
years after her death, and at his own house. A granddaughter had been
requested to play for him some favorite piece on the piano, and in
extricating her music from the drawer, she accidentally brought forth a
piece of embroidery with it. 'Washington,' said Mr. Hoffman, picking up
the faded relic, 'this is a piece of poor Matilda's workmanship.' The
effect was electric. He had been conversing in the sprightliest mood
before, but he sunk at once into utter silence, and in a few moments got
up and left the house. It is evidence with what romantic tenderness
Irving cherished the memory of this early love, that he kept by him
through life the Bible and Prayer-Book of Matilda. He lay with them
under his pillow in the first days of keen and vivid anguish that
followed her loss, and they were ever afterward, in all changes of
climate and country, his inseparable companions.'

The scene at the house of Mr. Hoffman, to which the biographer alludes,
took place after Irving's second return from Europe, and after an
absence of nearly twenty years from his native land. During this time he
had become famous as an author, and had been conceded the position of
the first American gentleman in Europe. He had been received at Courts
as in his official position (Secretary of Legation) and had received the
admiration of the social and intellectual aristocracy of England.
Returning full of honors, he became at once the lion of New-York, and
was greeted by a public dinner at the City Hotel. How little could it
have been imagined, that amid all this harvest of honors, while he stood
the cynosure of a general admiration, he should still be under the power
of a youthful attachment, and that outliving all the glories of his
splendid success, a maiden, dead thirty years, held him with undying
power. While others thought him the happy object of a nation's
popularity, his heart was stealing away from noise and notice to the
hallowed ground where Matilda lay.

'Oh! what are thousand living loves To that which can not quit the
dead?'

The biographer observes that 'it is in the light of this event that we
must interpret portions of 'Rural Funerals,' in the _Sketch-Book_, and
'Saint Mark's Eve,' in _Bracebridge Hull_.' From the former of these, we
therefore make an extract, which is now so powerfully illustrated by the
experience of its author:

'The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to
be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal; every other
affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep
open; this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude. Where
is the mother that would willingly forget the infant that perished
like a blossom from her arms, though every recollection is a pang?
Where is the child that would willingly forget the most tender of
parents, though to remember be but to lament? Who in the hour of
agony would forget the friend over whom he mourns? Who, when the
tomb is closing upon the remains of her he most loved, when he
feels his heart, as it were, crushed, in the closing of its portal,
would accept of consolation that must be bought by forgetfulness?
No; the love that survives the tomb is one of the noblest
attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise its
delights; and when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into
the gentle tear of recollection; when the sudden anguish and the
convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved
is softened away into pensive meditation on all that it was in the
days of its loveliness, who would root out such a sorrow from the
heart? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud over the
bright hour of gayety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of
gloom, yet who would exchange it even for the song of pleasure or
the burst of revelry? No; there is a voice from the tomb sweeter
than song; there is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even
from the charms of the living.... But the grave of those we love,
what a place for meditation! There it is that we call up in long
review the whole history of virtue and goodness, and the thousand
endearments lavished upon us almost unheeded in the daily
intercourse of intimacy; there it is that we dwell upon the
tenderness, the solemn, awful tenderness of the dying scene. The
bed of death, with all its stifled griefs, its noiseless
attendance, its mute, watchful assiduities. The last testimonies of
expiring love! The feeble, fluttering, thrilling--oh! how
thrilling--pressure of the hand! The last fond look of the glazing
eye turned upon us even from the threshold of existence! The
faint, faltering accents struggling in death to give one more
assurance of affection!'

How truly is this passage 'to be interpreted in the light of the event
in Irving's history', when it is evident from a comparison of it with
the memoranda, that it is a sketch of that scene which wrecked his
brightest hopes, and that here he is renewing in this unequaled
description of a dying-bed, the last hours of Matilda Hoffman. The
highly-wrought picture presents a complete detail to the eye, and yet
still more powerful is that simple utterance in the memoranda: '_I was
the last one she looked upon_.'

_St. Mark's Eve_,' to which reference is also made, was written several
years subsequently, and as may be gathered from its tone, under
circumstances of peculiar loneliness. It was while a solitary occupant
of his lodgings, a stranger in a foreign city, that he felt the
inspiration of precious memories, and improved his lonely hours by this
exquisite production. 'I am alone,' he writes, 'in my chamber; but these
themes have taken such hold upon me that I can not sleep. The room in
which I sit is just fitted to foster such a state of mind. The walls are
hung with tapestry, the figures of which are faded and look like
unsubstantial shapes melting away from sight.... The murmur of voices and
the peal of remote laughter no longer reach the ear. The clock from the
church, in which so many of the former inhabitants of this house lie
buried, has chimed the awful hour of midnight.' It was a fitting time to
yield to the power of that undying affection which abode with him under
all changes, and the serene presence of one snatched from him years ago
must at such times have invested him as with a spell. Thus he writes:

'Even the doctrines of departed spirits returning to visit the
scenes and beings which were dear to them during the body's
existence, though it has been debased by the absurd superstitions
of the vulgar, in itself is awfully solemn and sublime.... Raise it
above the frivolous purposes to which it has been applied; strip it
of the gloom and horror with which it has been surrounded; and
there is none of the whole circle of visionary creeds that could
more delightfully elevate the imagination or more tenderly affect
the heart.... What could be more consoling than the idea that the
souls of those we once loved were permitted to return and watch
over our welfare?--that affectionate and guardian spirits sat by
our pillows while we slept, keeping a vigil over our most helpless
hours?--that beauty and innocence which had languished in the tomb
yet smiled unseen around us, revealing themselves in those blest
dreams wherein they live over again the hours of past
endearments?.... There are departed beings that I have loved as I
never shall love again in this world--that have loved me as I never
again shall be loved. If such beings do ever retain in their
blessed spheres the attachments they felt on earth; if they take an
interest in the poor concerns of transient mortality, and are
permitted to hold communion with those they have loved on earth, I
feel as if now, at this deep hour of night, in this silence and
solitude, I could receive their visitation with the most solemn but
unalloyed delight.'

The use of the plural in the above extract obviated that publicity of
his especial bereavement which would have arisen from a reference to
_one_, and it is to be explained by the deaths of three persons to whom
he sustained the most endearing though varied relations of which man is
capable: his mother, his sister Nancy, and his betrothed. The first two
had become sacred memories, and were enshrined in the sanctuary of his
soul; but the latter was a thing of life, whose existence had become
identified with his own, and was made sure beyond the power of disease
and mortality. Who, indeed, would have been so welcome to the solitary
tourist on that weird midnight as she whose Bible and Prayer-Book
accompanied his wanderings, whose miniature was his treasure, and of
whom he could say: 'She died in the beauty of her youth, and in my
memory she will ever be young and beautiful.'

That a reuenion with all the beloved of earth was a controlling thought
in his mind, and one bearing an especial reference to this supreme
bereavement, is manifest from the following, from the same sketch:

'We take each other by the hand, and we exchange a few words and
looks of kindness, and we rejoice together for a few moments, and
then days, months, years intervene, and we see and know nothing of
each other. Or granting that we dwell together for the full season
of this mortal life, the grave soon closes its gates between us,
and then our spirits are doomed to remain in separation and
_widowhood_ until they meet again in that more perfect state of
being, where soul will dwell with soul in blissful communion, and
there will be neither death, nor absence, nor any thing else to
interrupt our felicity.'

Such was the view which cheered the life of one thus early stripped of
promised and expected happiness, and to which he dung during all changes
of time and place. Amid the infirmities of advancing years, while
surrounded by an endearing circle of relatives, who ministered to him
with the most watchful affection, there was one that abode in still
closer communion with his heart. While writing in his study at
Sunnyside, or pacing, in quiet solitude, the streets of New-York, at all
times, a fair young form hovered over him and beckoned him heavenward.
Years passed on, until a half-century had been told. All things had
changed, the scenes and characters of early life had passed away. The
lover had become a kindly old man. The young essayist had become a great
author and an heir of fame. The story of life was complete. The hour of
his departure was at hand, when suddenly the same hand which had
separated the lovers reuenited them forever. Who shall say that the last
image which flitted across his mind at the awful moment of dissolution,
was not that fresh and lovely form which he had cherished in unchanging
affection for fifty years?

I have stated my opinion that it was Irving's disappointment which made
him the great American author, and to this opinion I now return with
increased confidence. Had the plans of his youth been carried out; had
he become a partner of Mr. Hoffman, and had the hands of the lovers been
united, the whole tenor of his life would have been changed. He would
have published some fine things, in addition to the Knickerbocker
history, and would have ranked high as a gentleman of elegant humor; but
where would have been his enduring works? We sympathize with the
disappointed lover; but we feel thankful that from his sorrow we gather
such precious fruit. The death of Matilda led him abroad--to Spain,
where he compiled his _Columbus_ and gathered material for his
_Alhambra_--and to England, where the _Columbus_ was finished and
published, and where his name became great, in spite of national
prejudice. Beside this, the sorrow which cast its sacred shadow upon him
gave his writings that endearing charm which fascinates the emotional
nature and enabled him to touch the hidden chords of the heart.

If Ogilvie could congratulate him on the bankruptcy which drove him from
the details of trade to the richer fruition of literary promise, we may
consider it a beneficent working of Providence, which afforded to Irving
a still earlier emancipation from the law, cheered as it might have been
by the kindness of Mr. Hoffman and the society of Matilda.

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