Michael Coy
Let’s answer the first question first. Washington Irving was an American writer. He lived in interesting times.
In the week that he was born (April 1783), British forces on the American continent stopped fighting. The Americans, led by George Washington, had won their independence from London, and the baby was named after the first American hero.
He died in November 1859, in the week that Darwin published his epoch-making ‘Origin of Species’.
So Washington Irving came into the world at the very moment that the USA was being born, and he left it just as science was laying the foundation of modern thought.
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His father was Scottish and his mother was from Cornwall. When they got to America, they settled in New York.
Young Irving was six years old when he met the great man. George Washington was in New York in 1785 to be sworn in as the first president, and he visited the Irving home in William Street.
Putting his hand on the boy’s head, he blessed his namesake. Washington Irving regarded this as a mark of distinction and kept a painting of the incident near him all his life.
While his brothers (he had eight) went into business and did well for themselves, young Washington knew he wanted to do something artistic, but couldn’t decide what. When yellow fever broke out in New York city in 1798, the teenage Washington was sent upstate to be safe from the disease. This is where he realised that he wanted to be a writer.
Among the Dutch settlers (New York state was originally colonised by people from Holland), he heard fascinating stories about ghosts and bizarre spells. He used these experiences to write his first two books, ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ and ‘Rip Van Winkle’. This was when he chose a career in diplomacy.
And it is at this point that Andalucía comes into the story.
It may seem unlikely to us, but for maybe 300 years, Sevilla was the most important city in the world. It was the port where all the wealth of the New World reached Europe.
The king of Spain had a very profitable monopoly on tobacco, and Sevilla was where all the cigars and snuff were manufactured. The countries that mattered opened consular offices there to look after their merchants.
In the 1820s, Washington was rising rapidly in the diplomatic service (15 years later, he would be appointed America’s ambassador to Spain). And so he arrived in Sevilla.
One of his reasons for choosing this line of work was the excellent holidays.
In the summer of 1828, he was given a six-month summer vacation. He suggested to a young Russian diplomat that they should travel across Andalucía together, to check out the city of Granada. This is how his best book, ‘Tales of the Alhambra’, came to be written.
Today, by car, we can go from Sevilla to Granada (130 miles) in less than three hours. In 1828, it took nearly two weeks on horseback.
Irving kept a diary of the journey and wrote about the places and Andalucian characters encountered en route. Towns like Alcalá de Guadaira and Loja have changed a lot over two centuries, of course, but they are still recognisable from Irving’s description.
When the two travellers finally got to Granada, they asked about accommodation and were told that if they could get to the Alhambra before curfew, they could sleep there for free.
Curfew was ‘lights out’ when the city gates would close. It was already twilight. The two foreigners decided to run up the steep Cuesta de Gomerez to get into the monument before the gate was locked. They made it.
For weeks, they lived in that fabulous suite of exquisite buildings. This was the Romantic Age, and Irving does a great job of evoking the mysterious, tantalising feel of the ancient Moorish palace.
Sitting in one of the tiled rooms one night, he describes the fun going on, almost vertically below him, in the Carrera del Darro, as young gallants charmed girls by playing guitars. Today the music probably comes from Spotify, but something similar is still happening!
3 April – Washington Irving’s 242nd birthday
