Irving

writing anonymously for the theatre. In his
portfolio were "Abu Hassan" and "Der Frei-
chtitz," two translations he had played with in
Germany; and now he toiled over Payne's man-
uscripts, revising, and inserting lyrics. All this
came eventually to nothing. Crossing to Eng-
land in the spring, he rigged up and finished
tinder the bludgeon of Gilford, a pot-pourri of
tales and sketches—a miserable travesty of his
original purpose of a "work on Germany." This
was Tales of a Traveller (1824), a hodge-podge
of minor German anecdotes, scraps of stories
derived second hand from Moore, Horace Smith,
and Col. Thomas Aspinwall. The book was sav-
agely reviewed, and Irving's subsequent depres-
sion included the resolution to have done not
only with the novel, the drama, but also the short
story, per se. He had blurred, and he knew it,
the reputation won by The Sketch Book and
Bracebridge Hall.

The years, 1824 and 1825, in France were for
the most part, in spite of travel, unhappy.
Troubles thickened about him. We see him in
1825 frantically anxious about his disastrous in-
vestments of his meager capital, and working
hopelessly on a book concerning America, the
manuscript of which he probably burned. Yet
just ahead of him lay the richest experience of
his picturesque life. On Jan. 30, 1826, he re-
ceived a letter from Alexander H. Everett, at-
taching him to the United States embassy in
Madrid, and proposing a unique literary project.
It was one of those lucky chances so frequent in
the life of Washington Irving. As a boy on the
Hudson he had dreamed of King Boabdil and
"bellissima Granada"; during the last two years
in Paris and Bordeaux he had studied Spanish,
in the faint hope of crossing the Pyrenees. Now,
in February 1826, he was in Madrid, discussing
with Everett a proposed translation into Eng-
lish of the recently published Coleccion de los
Viages y Descubrimientos (of Columbus), by
the distinguished naval officer and scholar, Don
Martin Fernandez de Navarrete. The great cur-
rent of English and American interest in Span-
ish history and culture was now rising; the as-
tute Irving took advantage of it, anticipating, in
large measure, the work of Prescott, Ticknor,
and Gayangos. He was now lodged at the house
of the great Hispano-American bibliographer,
Obadiah Rich. Speaking Spanish in Rich's fam-
ily living room, studying Spanish in his incom-
parable library, and mingling in the Spanish so-
ciety of the capital, Irving began his three years'
immersion in the romantic life and thought of
the Peninsula. He perceived immediately that
Navarrete's book, a collection of scholarly docu-

Irving

ments, demanded for his purpose not transla-
tion but an adaptation in the form of a popular
life of the great discoverer. For two years he
labored, corresponding with Navarrete, and toil-
ing in the dusty libraries of Madrid. The His-
tory of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Co-
lumbus was published by Murray in London in
1828. It was the most painstaking effort of
Irving's life, and it won him election to the "Real
Academia de la Historia," the friendship of
Navarrete, and a literary reputation in Spain,
where the work is still quoted respectfully. Su-
perseded by modern histories and biographies
on the same subject, it still charms, and is a testi-
mony, with its carefully documented pages, to
Irving's minor gift as an amateur historian.

During the composition of this book Irving
had been diverted and fascinated in Rich's li-
brary by reading the ancient historians of Gra-
nada. When early in 1828, he left Madrid for a
holiday in Andalusia, he carried with him the
first rough notes of the manuscripts of A Chron-
icle of the Conquest of Granada and The Al-
hambra. His route, by diligence and on mule-
back, lay, through Cordova, to Granada, where,
during this first stay of a few weeks, he was in
a perpetual day dream, over the vega, the pal-
aces, and the relics of Boabdil and Ferdinand
and Isabella. He pressed on, through the nar-
row defiles of the robber-infested mountains, to
Malaga, Cadiz, and Seville. Here he lingered,
living near the Geralda and the Archives of the
Indias, happy in the art galleries with David
Wiikie, and working earnestly now at The Con-
quest of Granada. This he completed in a re-
treat just outside the little Spanish port of
Puerto de Santa Maria, whence he could look
down upon the field where fought Roderick the
Goth. Here and in Seville he cemented two
of the most interesting friendships of his life,
that with the German scholar Johann Nikolaus
Bohl von Faber, and with the latter's daughter
Cecilia. This lady, just beginning her career as
"Fernan Caballero," the distinguished Spanish
novelist, discussed Peninsula folklore with him,
and unquestionably influenced his shift from
Spanish history to Spanish folklore. The trans-
mutation of his concern for American, English,
and German folklore, was effected in his so-
journ, surrounded by Spanish servants and
Spanish friends, in the Alhambra itself, during
the spring and summer of 1829. Wandering in
the passes of the Sierras Nevadas, studying in
the library of the Duke of Gor, setting down old
Spanish stories from the lips of the peasant,
Mateo Ximenes, surveying from his private
apartment in the palace the Generalife and the

5°9