Reawakening the multifaceted man behind 'Rip Van Winkle'

The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of Washington Irving, By Andrew Burstein Basic, 420 pp., illustrated $27.50

Growing up in New York City rather far back in the last century, and often alarmed by middle-of-the-night thunderstorms, I could be comforted by being told that it was just Henry Hudson's crew bowling in the Catskills.

The strange tale in which they appear, Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle," would have been familiar from many retellings. But as Andrew Burstein notes in "The Original Knickerbocker," his engaging biography of Irving, that story, "so long familiar, has been slowly lost in Americans' historic memory."

But "Rip Van Winkle" does matter, writes Burstein, and so does Washington Irving.

Rip Van Winkle is the good-natured villager who wanders off for a day's squirrel hunting, meets up with Henry Hudson's crew, and falls asleep after too many "visits to the flagon." When he awakens, having slept through the American Revolution, 20 years have passed.

To Burstein, Rip "is the perfect protagonist in a fable designed to remind us that memory -- both fragile and powerful -- preserves what is good in the world."

As for Irving, born in 1783 and "a giant of the nineteenth century," his reputation "[has] taken a bit of a tumble," Burstein remarks, picking apart the standard, but "demeaning," biography from the mid-1930s.

"A priority" for Burstein, a professor at the University of Tulsa who has previously written on Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, "[was] to situate Irving in the political world that animated his writing."

Irving was "part of the inner circle" in New York that revolved around Aaron Burr, writing for the "Burrite" Morning Chronicle and later visiting Burr in jail while the former vice president was on trial for treason.

A "moderate" Federalist, Irving became a "moderate" Republican, visiting both presidents Jefferson and James Madison -- and being captivated by Dolley Madison. Later, he was a confidant of Jackson and of his Hudson River neighbor Martin Van Buren, feeling "personally bound to the fate of Jackson's America."

While serving as minister to Spain, Irving played a key role in negotiations with Britain over the boundaries of the Oregon Territory, "the most pressing foreign policy issue of the day," Burstein writes, with Irving's social relationships with British leaders "[making] a difference in the tone of the discussions."

As a writer, Burstein notes, Irving reinvented himself several times. He began as a satirist with his "masterful crazy quilt" "History of New York," creating what would become his, and the city's, persona, "Knickerbocker."

A turning point, writes Burstein, came with a visit to Walter Scott, "listening to his host's expansive story-telling." His own tales were the result, including "Rip Van Winkle," published in 1819, the same year as Scott's "Ivanhoe."

A fascination with Spanish culture led to several works, including his first serious history, "Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada."

Extensive travel in the American West, including "a haphazard buffalo hunt," produced "A Tour on the Prairies"; "Astoria," an account of a failed settlement in the Pacific Northwest; and a stirring saga, "The Adventures of Captain Bonneville," based on the journals of the leader of an Army expedition into Indian country.

And he capped his career with solidly researched biographies of Columbus and Washington.

In a biography as many-faceted as its subject, Burstein treads lightly on the question of Irving's sexuality. He dismisses as "[a] silly assumption" the view that Irving's love for a friend's daughter who died at 18 was "so enduring that he refused to marry." And he finds no firm evidence that Irving was homosexual. So, while he "does not seem asexual," Burstein leaves it that Irving was "the bachelor known as social, but non-threatening."

Having been attracted to Burstein's biography by the long-remembered reassurances during thunderstorms, this reader was curious as to Burstein's attraction. The book is dedicated "to Hackley School," and in his acknowledgments Burstein relates that while he was a student at that school in Tarrytown, N.Y., his "rambles" took him to Sunnyside, Irving's house, and led him "to hang out in Sleepy Hollow." The personal note heightens the charm of this most welcome biography.