The Crayon Papers by Washington Irving

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THE CRAYON PAPERS

by GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.

MOUNTJOY: or Some Passages out of the Life of a Castle-Builder

THE GREAT MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE--"A Time of Unexampled Prosperity"

DON JUAN: A Spectral Research

BROEK: or the Dutch Paradise

SKETCHES IN PARIS IN 1825--From the Traveling Note-Book of Geoffrey Crayon,
Gent.

My French Neighbor The Englishman at Paris English and French Character The
Tuileries and Windsor Castle The Field of Waterloo Paris at the Restoration

AMERICAN RESEARCHES IN ITALY--Life of Tasso: Recovery of a Lost Portrait of
Dante

THE TAKING OF THE VEIL The Charming Letorières

THE EARLY EXPERIENCES OF RALPH RINGWOOD--Noted Down from his Conversations

THE SEMINOLES

ORIGIN OF THE WHITE, THE RED, AND THE BLACK MEN--A Seminole Tradition

THE CONSPIRACY OF NEAMATHLA--An Authentic Sketch

LETTER FROM GRANADA

ABDERAHMAN: Founder of the Dynasty of the Ommiades in Spain

THE WIDOW'S ORDEAL: or a Judicial Trial by Combat

THE CREOLE VILLAGE: A Sketch from a Steamboat

A CONTENTED MAN

* * * * *

MOUNTJOY
OR SOME PASSAGES OUT OF THE LIFE OF A CASTLE-BUILDER

I was born among romantic scenery, in one of the wildest parts of the
Hudson, which at that time was not so thickly settled as at present. My
father was descended from one of the old Huguenot families that came over
to this country on the revocation of the edict of Nantz. He lived in a
style of easy, rural independence, on a patrimonial estate that had been
for two or three generations in the family. He was an indolent,
good-natured man, who took the world as it went, and had a kind of laughing
philosophy, that parried all rubs and mishaps, and served him in the place
of wisdom. This was the part of his character least to my taste; for I was
of an enthusiastic, excitable temperament, prone to kindle up with new
schemes and projects, and he was apt to dash my sallying enthusiasm by some
unlucky joke; so that whenever I was in a glow with any sudden excitement,
I stood in mortal dread of his good-humor.

Yet he indulged me in every vagary; for I was an only son, and of course a
personage of importance in the household. I had two sisters older than
myself, and one younger. The former were educated at New York, under the
eye of a maiden aunt; the latter remained at home, and was my cherished
playmate, the companion of my thoughts. We were two imaginative little
beings, of quick susceptibility, and prone to see wonders and mysteries in
everything around us. Scarce had we learned to read, when our mother made
us holiday presents of all the nursery literature of the day; which at that
time consisted of little books covered with gilt paper, adorned with
"cuts," and filled with tales of fairies, giants, and enchanters. What
draughts of delightful fiction did we then inhale! My sister Sophy was of a
soft and tender nature. She would weep over the woes of the Children in the
Wood, or quake at the dark romance of Blue-Beard, and the terrible
mysteries of the blue chamber. But I was all for enterprise and adventure.
I burned to emulate the deeds of that heroic prince who delivered the white
cat from her enchantment; or he of no less royal blood, and doughty
enterprise, who broke the charmed slumber of the Beauty in the Wood!

The house in which we lived was just the kind of place to foster such
propensities. It was a venerable mansion, half villa, half farmhouse. The
oldest part was of stone, with loop-holes for musketry, having served as a
family fortress in the time of the Indians. To this there had been made
various additions, some of brick, some of wood, according to the exigencies
of the moment; so that it was full of nooks and crooks, and chambers of all
sorts and sizes. It was buried among willows, elms, and cherry trees, and
surrounded with roses and hollyhocks, with honeysuckle and sweetbrier
clambering about every window. A brood of hereditary pigeons sunned
themselves upon the roof; hereditary swallows and martins built about the
eaves and chimneys; and hereditary bees hummed about the flower-beds.

Under the influence of our story-books every object around us now assumed a
new character, and a charmed interest. The wild flowers were no longer the
mere ornaments of the fields, or the resorts of the toilful bee; they were
the lurking-places of fairies. We would watch the humming-bird, as it
hovered around the trumpet creeper at our porch, and the butterfly as it
flitted up into the blue air, above the sunny tree-tops, and fancy them
some of the tiny beings from fairyland. I would call to mind all that I had
read of Robin Goodfellow and his power of transformation. Oh, how I envied
him that power! How I longed to be able to compress my form into utter
littleness; to ride the bold dragonfly; swing on the tall bearded grass;
follow the ant into his subterraneous habitation, or dive into the
cavernous depths of the honeysuckle!

While I was yet a mere child I was sent to a daily school, about two miles
distant. The schoolhouse was on the edge of a wood, close by a brook
overhung with birches, alders, and dwarf willows. We of the school who
lived at some distance came with our dinners put up in little baskets. In
the intervals of school hours we would gather round a spring, under a tuft
of hazel-bushes, and have a kind of picnic; interchanging the rustic
dainties with which our provident mothers had fitted us out. Then, when our
joyous repast was over, and my companions were disposed for play, I would
draw forth one of my cherished story-books, stretch myself on the green
sward, and soon lose myself in its bewitching contents.

I became an oracle among my schoolmates on account of my superior
erudition, and soon imparted to them the contagion of my infected fancy.
Often in the evening, after school hours, we would sit on the trunk of some
fallen tree in the woods, and vie with each other in telling extravagant
stories, until the whip-poor-will began his nightly moaning, and the
fireflies sparkled in the gloom. Then came the perilous journey homeward.
What delight we would take in getting up wanton panics in some dusky part
of the wood; scampering like frightened deer; pausing to take breath;
renewing the panic, and scampering off again, wild with fictitious terror!

Our greatest trial was to pass a dark, lonely pool, covered with
pond-lilies, peopled with bullfrogs and water snakes, and haunted by two
white cranes. Oh! the terrors of that pond! How our little hearts would
beat as we approached it; what fearful glances we would throw around! And
if by chance a plash of a wild duck, or the guttural twang of a bullfrog,
struck our ears, as we stole quietly by--away we sped, nor paused until
completely out of the woods. Then, when I reached home, what a world of
adventures and imaginary terrors would I have to relate to my sister Sophy!

As I advanced in years, this turn of mind increased upon me, and became
more confirmed. I abandoned myself to the impulses of a romantic
imagination, which controlled my studies, and gave a bias to all my habits.
My father observed me continually with a book in my hand, and satisfied
himself that I was a profound student; but what were my studies? Works of
fiction; tales of chivalry; voyages of discovery; travels in the East;
everything, in short, that partook of adventure and romance. I well
remember with what zest I entered upon that part of my studies which
treated of the heathen mythology, and particularly of the sylvan deities.
Then indeed my school books became dear to me. The neighborhood was well
calculated to foster the reveries of a mind like mine. It abounded with
solitary retreats, wild streams, solemn forests, and silent valleys. I
would ramble about for a whole day with a volume of Ovid's Metamorphoses in
my pocket, and work myself into a kind of self-delusion, so as to identify
the surrounding scenes with those of which I had just been reading. I would
loiter about a brook that glided through the shadowy depths of the forest,
picturing it to myself the haunt of Naiads. I would steal round some bushy
copse that opened upon a glade, as if I expected to come suddenly upon
Diana and her nymphs, or to behold Pan and his satyrs bounding, with whoop
and halloo, through the woodland. I would throw myself, during the panting
heats of a summer noon, under the shade of some wide-spreading tree, and
muse and dream away the hours, in a state of mental intoxication. I drank
in the very light of day, as nectar, and my soul seemed to bathe with
ecstasy in the deep blue of a summer sky.

In these wanderings nothing occurred to jar my feelings, or bring me back
to the realities of life. There is a repose in our mighty forests that
gives full scope to the imagination. Now and then I would hear the distant
sound of the woodcutter's ax, or the crash of some tree which he had laid
low; but these noises, echoing along the quiet landscape, could easily be
wrought by fancy into harmony with its illusions. In general, however, the
woody recesses of the neighborhood were peculiarly wild and unfrequented. I
could ramble for a whole day, without coming upon any traces of
cultivation. The partridge of the wood scarcely seemed to shun my path, and
the squirrel, from his nut-tree, would gaze at me for an instant, with
sparkling eye, as if wondering at the unwonted intrusion.

I cannot help dwelling on this delicious period of my life; when as yet I
had known no sorrow, nor experienced any worldly care. I have since studied
much, both of books and men, and of course have grown too wise to be so
easily pleased; yet with all my wisdom, I must confess I look back with a
secret feeling of regret to the days of happy ignorance before I had begun
to be a philosopher.

* * * * *

It must be evident that I was in a hopeful training for one who was to
descend into the arena of life, and wrestle with the world. The tutor,
also, who superintended my studies in the more advanced stage of my
education, was just fitted to complete the _fata morgana_ which was
forming in my mind. His name was Glencoe. He was a pale, melancholy-looking
man, about forty years of age; a native of Scotland, liberally educated,
and who had devoted himself to the instruction of youth from taste rather
than necessity; for, as he said, he loved the human heart, and delighted to
study it in its earlier impulses. My two elder sisters, having returned
home from a city boarding-school, were likewise placed under his care, to
direct their reading in history and belles-lettres.

We all soon became attached to Glencoe. It is true, we were at first
somewhat prepossessed against him. His meager, pallid countenance, his
broad pronunciation, his inattention to the little forms of society, and an
awkward and embarrassed manner, on first acquaintance, were much against
him; but we soon discovered that under this unpromising exterior existed
the kindest urbanity of temper; the warmest sympathies; the most
enthusiastic benevolence. His mind was ingenious and acute. His reading had
been various, but more abstruse than profound; his memory was stored, on
all subjects, with facts, theories, and quotations, and crowded with crude
materials for thinking. These, in a moment of excitement, would be, as it
were, melted down, and poured forth in the lava of a heated imagination. At
such moments, the change in the whole man was wonderful. His meager form
would acquire a dignity and grace; his long, pale visage would flash with a
hectic glow; his eyes would beam with intense speculation; and there would
be pathetic tones and deep modulations in his voice, that delighted the
ear, and spoke movingly to the heart.

But what most endeared him to us was the kindness and sympathy with which
he entered into all our interests and wishes. Instead of curbing and
checking our young imaginations with the reins of sober reason, he was a
little too apt to catch the impulse and be hurried away with us. He could
not withstand the excitement of any sally of feeling or fancy, and was
prone to lend heightening tints to the illusive coloring of youthful
anticipation.

Under his guidance my sisters and myself soon entered upon a more extended
range of studies; but while they wandered, with delighted minds, through
the wide field of history and belles-lettres, a nobler walk was opened to
my superior intellect.

The mind of Glencoe presented a singular mixture of philosophy and poetry.
He was fond of metaphysics and prone to indulge in abstract speculations,
though his metaphysics were somewhat fine spun and fanciful, and his
speculations were apt to partake of what my father most irreverently termed
"humbug." For my part, I delighted in them, and the more especially because
they set my father to sleep and completely confounded my sisters. I entered
with my accustomed eagerness into this new branch of study. Metaphysics
were now my passion. My sisters attempted to accompany me, but they soon
faltered, and gave out before they had got half way through Smith's Theory
of the Moral Sentiments. I, however, went on, exulting in my strength.
Glencoe supplied me with books, and I devoured them with appetite, if not
digestion. We walked and talked together under the trees before the house,
or sat apart, like Milton's angels, and held high converse upon themes
beyond the grasp of ordinary intellects. Glencoe possessed a kind of
philosophic chivalry, in imitation of the old peripatetic sages, and was
continually dreaming of romantic enterprises in morals, and splendid
systems for the improvement of society. He had a fanciful mode of
illustrating abstract subjects, peculiarly to my taste; clothing them with
the language of poetry, and throwing round them almost the magic hues of
fiction. "How charming," thought I, "is divine philosophy;" not harsh and
crabbed, as dull fools suppose,

"But a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns."

I felt a wonderful self-complacency at being on such excellent terms with a
man whom I considered on a parallel with the sages of antiquity, and looked
down with a sentiment of pity on the feebler intellects of my sisters, who
could comprehend nothing of metaphysics. It is true, when I attempted to
study them by myself, I was apt to get in a fog; but when Glencoe came to
my aid, everything was soon as clear to me as day. My ear drank in the
beauty of his words; my imagination was dazzled with the splendor of his
illustrations. It caught up the sparkling sands of poetry that glittered
through his speculations, and mistook them for the golden ore of wisdom.
Struck with the facility with which I seemed to imbibe and relish the most
abstract doctrines, I conceived a still higher opinion of my mental powers,
and was convinced that I also was a philosopher.

* * * * *

I was now verging toward man's estate, and though my education had been
extremely irregular--following the caprices of my humor, which I mistook
for the impulses of my genius--yet I was regarded with wonder and delight
by my mother and sisters, who considered me almost as wise and infallible
as I considered myself. This high opinion of me was strengthened by a
declamatory habit, which made me an oracle and orator at the domestic
board. The time was now at hand, however, that was to put my philosophy to
the test.

We had passed through a long winter, and the spring at length opened upon
us with unusual sweetness. The soft serenity of the weather; the beauty of
the surrounding country; the joyous notes of the birds; the balmy breath of
flower and blossom, all combined to fill my bosom with indistinct
sensations, and nameless wishes. Amid the soft seductions of the season, I
lapsed into a state of utter indolence, both of body and mind.

Philosophy had lost its charms for me. Metaphysics--faugh! I tried to
study; took down volume after volume, ran my eye vacantly over a few pages,
and threw them by with distaste. I loitered about the house, with my hands
in my pockets, and an air of complete vacancy. Something was necessary to
make me happy; but what was that something? I sauntered to the apartments
of my sisters, hoping their conversation might amuse me. They had walked
out, and the room was vacant. On the table lay a volume which they had been
reading. It was a novel. I had never read a novel, having conceived a
contempt for works of the kind, from hearing them universally condemned. It
is true, I had remarked that they were as universally read; but I
considered them beneath the attention of a philosopher, and never would
venture to read them, lest I should lessen my mental superiority in the
eyes of my sisters. Nay, I had taken up a work of the kind now and then,
when I knew my sisters were observing me, looked into it for a moment, and
then laid it down, with a slight supercilious smile. On the present
occasion, out of mere listlessness, I took up the volume and turned over a
few of the first pages. I thought I heard some one coming, and laid it
down. I was mistaken; no one was near, and what I had read tempted my
curiosity to read a little further. I leaned against a window-frame, and in
a few minutes was completely lost in the story. How long I stood there
reading I know not, but I believe for nearly two hours. Suddenly I heard my
sisters on the stairs, when I thrust the book into my bosom, and the two
other volumes which lay near into my pockets, and hurried out of the house
to my beloved woods. Here I remained all day beneath the trees, bewildered,
bewitched, devouring the contents of these delicious volumes, and only
returned to the house when it was too dark to peruse their pages.

This novel finished, I replaced it in my sisters' apartment, and looked for
others. Their stock was ample, for they had brought home all that were
current in the city; but my appetite demanded an immense supply. All this
course of reading was carried on clandestinely, for I was a little ashamed
of it, and fearful that my wisdom might be called in question; but this
very privacy gave it additional zest. It was "bread eaten in secret"; it
had the charm of a private amour.

But think what must have been the effect of such a course of reading on a
youth of my temperament and turn of mind; indulged, too, amid romantic
scenery and in the romantic season of the year. It seemed as if I had
entered upon a new scene of existence. A train of combustible feelings were
lighted up in me, and my soul was all tenderness and passion. Never was
youth more completely love-sick, though as yet it was a mere general
sentiment, and wanted a definite object. Unfortunately, our neighborhood
was particularly deficient in female society, and I languished in vain for
some divinity to whom I might offer up this most uneasy burden of
affections. I was at one time seriously enamored of a lady whom I saw
occasionally in my rides, reading at the window of a country-seat; and
actually serenaded her with my flute; when, to my confusion, I discovered
that she was old enough to be my mother. It was a sad damper to my romance;
especially as my father heard of it, and made it the subject of one of
those household jokes which he was apt to serve up at every meal-time.

I soon recovered from this check, however, but it was only to relapse into
a state of amorous excitement. I passed whole days in the fields, and along
the brooks; for there is something in the tender passion that makes us
alive to the beauties of nature. A soft sunshiny morning infused a sort of
rapture into my breast. I flung open my arms, like the Grecian youth in
Ovid, as if I would take in and embrace the balmy atmosphere. [Footnote:
Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book vii] The song of the birds melted me to
tenderness. I would lie by the side of some rivulet for hours, and form
garlands of the flowers on its banks, and muse on ideal beauties, and sigh
from the crowd of undefined emotions that swelled my bosom.

In this state of amorous delirium, I was strolling one morning along a
beautiful wild brook, which I had discovered in a glen. There was one place
where a small waterfall, leaping from among rocks into a natural basin,
made a scene such as a poet might have chosen as the haunt of some shy
Naiad. It was here I usually retired to banquet on my novels. In visiting
the place this morning I traced distinctly, on the margin of the basin,
which was of fine clear sand, the prints of a female foot of the most
slender and delicate proportions. This was sufficient for an imagination
like mine. Robinson Crusoe himself, when he discovered the print of a
savage foot on the beach of his lonely island, could not have been more
suddenly assailed with thick-coming fancies.

I endeavored to track the steps, but they only passed for a few paces along
the fine sand, and then were lost among the herbage. I remained gazing in
reverie upon this passing trace of loveliness. It evidently was not made by
any of my sisters, for they knew nothing of this haunt; besides, the foot
was smaller than theirs; it was remarkable for its beautiful delicacy.

My eye accidentally caught two or three half-withered wild flowers lying on
the ground. The unknown nymph had doubtless dropped them from her bosom!
Here was a new document of taste and sentiment. I treasured them up as
invaluable relics. The place, too, where I found them, was remarkably
picturesque, and the most beautiful part of the brook. It was overhung with
a fine elm, entwined with grapevines. She who could select such a spot, who
could delight in wild brooks, and wild flowers, and silent solitudes, must
have fancy, and feeling, and tenderness; and with all these qualities, she
must be beautiful!

But who could be this Unknown, that had thus passed by, as in a morning
dream, leaving merely flowers and fairy footsteps to tell of her
loveliness? There was a mystery in it that bewildered me. It was so vague
and disembodied, like those "airy tongues that syllable men's names" in
solitude. Every attempt to solve the mystery was vain. I could hear of no
being in the neighborhood to whom this trace could be ascribed. I haunted
the spot, and became daily more and more enamored. Never, surely, was
passion more pure and spiritual, and never lover in more dubious situation.
My case could be compared only to that of the amorous prince in the fairy
tale of Cinderella; but he had a glass slipper on which to lavish his
tenderness. I, alas! was in love with a footstep!

The imagination is alternately a cheat and a dupe; nay, more, it is the
most subtle of cheats, for it cheats itself and becomes the dupe of its own
delusions. It conjures up "airy nothings," gives to them a "local
habitation and a name," and then bows to their control as implicitly as
though they were realities. Such was now my case. The good Numa could not
more thoroughly have persuaded himself that the nymph Egeria hovered about
her sacred fountain and communed with him in spirit than I had deceived
myself into a kind of visionary intercourse with the airy phantom
fabricated in my brain. I constructed a rustic seat at the foot of the tree
where I had discovered the footsteps. I made a kind of bower there, where I
used to pass my mornings reading poetry and romances. I carved hearts and
darts on the tree, and hung it with garlands. My heart was full to
overflowing, and wanted some faithful bosom into which it might relieve
itself. What is a lover without a confidante? I thought at once of my
sister Sophy, my early playmate, the sister of my affections. She was so
reasonable, too, and of such correct feelings, always listening to my words
as oracular sayings, and admiring my scraps of poetry as the very
inspirations of the muse. From such a devoted, such a rational being, what
secrets could I have?

I accordingly took her one morning to my favorite retreat. She looked
around, with delighted surprise, upon the rustic seat, the bower, the tree
carved with emblems of the tender passion. She turned her eyes upon me to
inquire the meaning.

"Oh, Sophy," exclaimed I, clasping both her hands in mine, and looking
earnestly in her face, "I am in love."

She started with surprise.

"Sit down," said I, "and I will tell you all."

She seated herself upon the rustic bench, and I went into a full history of
the footstep, with all the associations of idea that had been conjured up
by my imagination.

Sophy was enchanted; it was like a fairy tale; she had read of such
mysterious visitations in books, and the loves thus conceived were always
for beings of superior order, and were always happy. She caught the
illusion in all its force; her cheek glowed; her eye brightened.

"I daresay she's pretty," said Sophy.

"Pretty!" echoed I, "she is beautiful." I went through all the reasoning by
which I had logically proved the fact to my own satisfaction. I dwelt upon
the evidences of her taste, her sensibility to the beauties of nature; her
soft meditative habit that delighted in solitude. "Oh," said I, clasping my
hands, "to have such a companion to wander through these scenes; to sit
with her by this murmuring stream; to wreathe garlands round her brows; to
hear the music of her voice mingling with the whisperings of these groves;
to--"

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