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Handwritten notebook by Washington Irving, 118 pages, 3.75 x 5.75, labeled on the front cover in Irving's hand: "Notes on Spanish Politics, 1842-3." The notebook is composed of paragraphs of varying length and comprises notes written by Irving, as well as quotations from books and newspapers, some written in French. Many of the notes concern Spanish history; sections are included under such headings as "Product of Land in Spain," "Mendizabal's Ministry," "Vote of Confidence, 24 Dec. 1835," "Ministry of Mr. Isturiz," "Parties in Spain, 1843," and "Objections to the Constitution of 1812 by Marquis Miraflores."
A typical passage reads, in part: "With all that could…be said agst. the monks, they had made friends among the peasantry. Easy landlords. They had no families to provide for. They laid up nothing for the future, and as soon as they had provided for their immediate wants they were easy about the rest. The sudden destruction of the monks aroused the selfish ways…among the peasantry. They knew the govt. of new proprietors could exact more than a corporation of ideas without interests either of family or duty. The beggars who swarmed about the convent gates no longer received the remains of their lazy repasts."
Inscribed inside the front cover in another hand: "Notes on Spanish politics in the handwriting of Washington Irving of Sunnyside. George Irving, January 1885." Also bears the ex-libris bookplates of Rev. Anson Phelps Stokes and Dr. Noel J. Cortes affixed to endpapers. A couple of contemporary newspaper clippings are laid in. In fine condition. Housed in a custom-made slipcase with gilt-stamped brown morocco spine.
Provenance: Rare Americana Collected by the Late Anson Phelps Stokes, Parke-Bernet Galleries, November 15–16, 1948.
The Dictionary of American Biography describes Irving's first years in Spain, where he was attached to the U.S. Embassy from 1826-1829, as 'the richest experience of his picturesque life.' During this time he became immersed 'in the romantic life and thought of the Peninsula' and wrote The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828), A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (1829) and The Alhambra (published after his return to America in 1832).
Irving's second Spanish residence, as minister to Spain from 1842-1846 was very different. In his sixties, 'his eyes fell again upon the old scenes, but now he lived, surrounded by secretaries, within a stone's throw of the palace [in Madrid], and was plunged at once into the intrigues surrounding the Regent, Maria Christina, the dictator, Espartero, and the little queen Isabella II. Under the stress of the tangled diplomatic life and the burden of that old illness which had begun long ago in London, his literary endeavor ceased.' Still, he 'never ceased, even in the corrupt life of the Madrid of the forties, to find in the story of Isabella II the mood of old romance,' and he remained 'an important nineteenth-century interpreter of Spanish legend and culture.'
