Life isn't all beer and skittles

Rip was ready to attend to any body's business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, it was impossible.

-- Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle

Here lies the gentle humorist, who died
In the bright Indian Summer of his fame!
A simple stone, with but a date and name,
Marks his secluded resting-place beside
The river that he loved and glorified.
Here in the autumn of his days he came,
But the dry leaves of life were all aflame
With tints that brightened and were multiplied.
How sweet a life was his; how sweet a death!
Living, to wing with mirth the weary hours,
Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer;
Dying, to leave a memory like the breath
Of summers full of sunshine and of showers,
A grief and gladness in the atmosphere.

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, In the Churchyard at Tarrytown 1876


When I saw the name Washington Irving on the syllabus, my mind was full of all kinds of images & recollections from childhood. I remember watching the Donald Duck cartoon in which his 3 nephews try to convince him that he's slept for 20 years just like Rip Van Winkle. I remember the cartoon version of The Headless Horseman with Ichabod Crane and Mr. Toad (from "Wind in the Willows," another favorite of mine) -- and was it Don Knotts who voiced Ichabod? or Bing Crosby? I also remember learning that the reason we use ten bowling pins now instead of nine (like in the story) is because nine-pin bowling was outlawed for being a bad influence on society, so people started playing with 10 pins in order to circumvent the law.

Still, even though I knew the story, I think this was the very first time I've actually read Rip Van Winkle!

I think it's very interesting the way Irving makes Van Winkle into a sympathetic character. Here's a man who "would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound" and who had an "insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labour"--someone we might today call "a lazy bum"--certainly not a paragon of American Industriousness. And yet, "he was a great favourite among all the good wives of the village," and the village children "would shout with joy whenever he approached." Why, Irving even tells us that "not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighbourhood!" Even with this "great error in . . . composition," Van Winkle is a likeable character.

However, one thing in the story was different from the way I remembered it. I thought that Van Winkle got to party more with the strange characters in the glen, that he got to bowl, and that they all had a good time, making merry over their keg of liquor. I clearly remember some librarian or teacher telling us children that the moral of the story was that we ought not to waste our lives in frivolous pursuits, or else life would pass us by & it would be as if we suddenly woke up after having been asleep for 20 years and wonder where our life went (and her helper used the opportunity to warn of the dangers of alcohol).

But in the story I read today, the party in the glen is not so cheerful: "though these folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure [Van Winkle] had ever witnessed." He didn't even get to bowl with them, but instead just served them their drinks (and snuck a few for himself "when no eye was fixed upon him"), then fell asleep! That doesn't sound like very much fun! Obviously Hendrick Hudson & his crew don't know how to throw a very good party.

I googled some critical analysis of the story today, too, and found that many people think that Van Winkle represents Europe's view of America of the time -- kind-hearted and good-natured, but lazy -- and that his wife represents England, in that she's always telling him what to do so that he chafes under her "termagant" ways. After his long slumber, Van Winkle finds that he is finally out from under his wife's thumb & is free to just be himself -- just as the US was finally free of England's tyranny after the Revolutionary War and its citizens could make themselves into anything they wanted, without interference.

I suppose that readers of the time would have seen this story as an allegory of the young United States, but unlike so many othe "period pieces," it still works as a good story when divorced from that interpretation. (I'm thinking of "Faustus" which I saw last spring - it was probably hilarious to the audiences of the time, but most of it makes no sense now. Is that how 22nd century audiences will view "The Capitol Steps"? What will they think of Stephen Colbert??)

With such a gift for story-telling, it's no wonder that Washington Irving remains one of America's most-loved authors.


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