Irving

mans." His affectionate guidance of Washing-
ton Irving's talents was an important formative
influence in the younger brother's life.

During the first years of the nineteenth cen-
tury Peter Irving, neglecting the practice of
medicine, was prominent in New York society,
and was the first to link the name of his middle-
class family to writing. Aaron Burr at this time
referred respectfully to his ability, and William
Dunlap thought him "a gentleman of the first
talents." He was known chiefly, however, as a
dabbler in politics, and he became, in October
1802, owner and editor of the Morning Chronicle,
a Burrite newspaper, which included Washing-
ton Irving among its contributors. In 1804 he
continued his political badgering through his
anonymous and almost forgotten newspaper, The
Corrector, an abusive and somewhat scurrilous
sheet After Washington Irving's return from
his first journey abroad in 1806, Peter Irving
was for a brief time one of the "Worthies" of
"Cockloft Hall," the rendezvous in Gouverneur
Kemble's old mansion in Newark of a group of
young wits, who later produced Salmagundi: or,
the Whim-Whams of Launcelot Langstaff Esq.
and Others, a satire which took the New York of
1807 and 1808 by storm. He himself was abroad
from December 1806 to January 1808, but was
again in New York to plan with his brother
Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York.
He returned to Europe, however, at the begin-
ning of 1809 before the completion and publi-
cation of the great comic burlesque, and re-
mained abroad until 1836.

Here Washington Irving joined him in Liver-
pool in 1815; together in 1818 they bore the
disaster of the business collapse of the firm of
P. & E. Irving, which Peter and his brother
Ebenezer had founded in 1810. From this time
on Peter Irving's life was nomadic; he was use-
ful chiefly as companion and adviser to Wash-
ington, with whom he traveled almost constantly
until the latter's departure for southern Spain in
1826. His pieds & terre continued to be Caen
and Havre, the last place a favorite refuge for
the younger brother during his own wanderings.
During Washington's stay in Europe, Peter re-
mained in person or by letter the intimate sharer
of all the former's literary ambitions. He lin-
gered on in France for four years after Wash-
ington's return to America, but, then, at Wash-
ington's earnest entreaty, he came to "Sunny-
side." He lived, however, only two years more,
dying in the summer of 1838.
Genial, social, but irresolute, and, after 1815,

a semi-invalid, Peter Irving is chiefly interesting

as complement and echo of Washington Irving.

Irving

Together, after the success of The Sketch Book
they mingled in the literary set of Samuel Rogers'
Thomas Campbell, and Thomas Moore. Together
they planned A History of New York, and Tales
of a Traveller. Not unlike in temperament, they
both recorded carefully their experiences in
travel, and Peter Irving's journals, of which at
least three survive, suggest their common inter-
est in their observation of romantic scenery and
places. At the same time these manuscripts of
Peter's suggest his deficiency: whereas those of
his younger brother include countless suggestions
for tale and sketch, Peter Irving's are merely
objective records of an American's travels dur-
ing the first twenty years of the century. Ap-
preciative of literature, he lacked the creative
gift. His one novel, Giovanni Sbogarro: A Ve-
netian Tale, a story of historical adventure, pub-
lished in New York in 1820, was a failure.

[Facts concerning Peter Irving may be derived from
incidental mention in P. M. Irving, The Life and Let-
ters of Washington Irving (4 vols., 1862-64) ; The
Journals of Washing-ton Irving (1919), ed. by G. S.
Hellman; from Journal of Washington Irving, 1823-
1824. (1931), ed. by S. T. Williams; from the collections
of Irving MSS. in the N. Y. Pub. Lib. and at Yale
Univ.; and from the three surviving journals by Peter
Irving, at Yale Univ., at the Univ. of Tex., and in the
possession of Dr. Roderick Terry of Newport, R. I.
See also E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyc. of Am. Lit.
(rev. ed., 2 vols., 1876).] S.T.W.

IRVING, PIERRE MUNRO (1803-1876)",
lawyer and writer, was the son of William Irving
[#.#.] and Julia (Padding) Irving, and the
nephew of Washington Irving [q.v.'], whose first
biographer he became. He was graduated from
Columbia College in 1821, and studied law, but,
like most of the Irvings, he early manifested
strong literary tastes, and coming to manhood
during the first successes of his uncle, idealized
him, and devoted much of his life to him. An in-
teresting glimpse of Pierre as a young and at-
tractive wanderer is afforded in the letters of
Washington Irving written from Spain in 1827.
The older man, then engaged upon his life of
Columbus, was lonely, and confided to his nephew
his unhappiness at his estrangement from Ameri-
cans by reason of his long absence in Europe.
The intimacy here commenced continued, and,
after Irving's return to the United States in
1832, found expression in literary collabora-
tion. Washington Irving's Astoria (1836) owed
its existence chiefly to Pierre Irving's industry
in collecting and collating materials regarding
John Jacob Astor's famous expedition. After his
uncle's ambassadorship to Spain, which ended
in 1846, Pierre managed both the financial and
literary affairs of the author, and during his last
illness kept an encyclopedic journal of his con-
versations. After appointment in 1859 as literary

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