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Washington Irving (1783-1859). The Hall. David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays

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Washington Irving (1783-1859). The Hall. David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays Dictionary Biographies Literary Criticism Welcome Terms of Service ⧏ Previous Next ⧐ Contents Bibliographic Record David J. Brewer, et al., eds.  The World’s Best Essays.  1900. The Hall
By Washington Irving (1783–1859) Complete. From “Bracebridge Hall.”

          The ancientest house, and the best for housekeeping, in this county or the next; and though the master of it write but Squire, I know no lord like him.—“Merry Beggars.”

THE READER, if he has perused the volumes of “The Sketch Book,” will probably recollect something of the Bracebridge family, with which I once passed a Christmas. I am now on another visit at the Hall, having been invited to a wedding which is shortly to take place. The Squire’s second son, Guy, a fine, spirited young captain in the army, is about to be married to his father’s ward, the fair Julia Templeton. A gathering of relations and friends has already commenced, to celebrate the joyful occasion; for the old gentleman is an enemy to quiet, private weddings. “There is nothing,” he says, “like launching a young couple gayly, and cheering them from the shore; a good outset is half the voyage.”

1   Before proceeding any further, I would beg that the Squire might not be confounded with that class of hard-riding, fox-hunting gentlemen so often described, and, in fact, so nearly extinct in England. I use this rural title partly because it is his universal appellation throughout the neighborhood, and partly because it saves me the frequent repetition of his name, which is one of those rough old English names at which Frenchmen exclaim in despair.

2   The Squire is, in fact, a lingering specimen of the old English country gentleman; rusticated a little by living almost entirely on his estate, and something of a humorist, as Englishmen are apt to become when they have an opportunity of living in their own way, I like his hobby passing well, however, which is a bigoted devotion to old English manners and customs; it jumps a little with my own humor, having as yet a lively and unsated curiosity about the ancient and genuine characteristics of my “fatherland.”

3   There are some traits about the Squire’s family, also, which appear to me to be national. It is one of those old aristocratical families, which, I believe, are peculiar to England, and scarcely understood in other countries; that is to say, families of the ancient gentry, who, though destitute of titled rank, maintain a high ancestral pride; who look down upon all nobility of recent creation, and would consider it a sacrifice of dignity to merge the venerable name of their house in a modern title.

4   This feeling is very much fostered by the importance which they enjoy on their hereditary domains. The family mansion is an old manor house, standing in a retired and beautiful part of Yorkshire. Its inhabitants have been always regarded, through the surrounding country, as “the great ones of the earth”; and the little village near the Hall looks up to the Squire with almost feudal homage. An old manor house, and an old family of this kind, are rarely to be met with at the present day; and it is probably the peculiar humor of the Squire that has retained this secluded specimen of English housekeeping in something like the genuine old style.

5   I am again quartered in the paneled chamber, in the antique wing of the house. The prospect from my window, however, has quite a different aspect from that which it wore on my winter visit. Through the early month of April, yet a few warm, sunshiny days have drawn forth the beauties of the spring, which, I think, are always most captivating on their first opening. The parterres of the old-fashioned garden are gay with flowers; and the gardener has brought out his exotics, and placed them along the stone balustrades. The trees are clothed with green buds and tender leaves. When I throw open my jingling casement, I smell the odor of mignonette, and hear the hum of the bees from the flowers against the sunny wall, with the varied song of the throstle, and the cheerful notes of the tuneful little wren.

6   While sojourning in this stronghold of old fashions, it is my intention to make occasional sketches of the scenes and characters before me. I would have it understood, however, that I am not writing a novel, and have nothing of intricate plot or marvelous adventure to promise the reader. The Hall of which I treat has, for aught I know, neither trapdoor, nor sliding panel, nor donjon keep; and, indeed, appears to have no mystery about it. The family is a worthy well-meaning family, that, in all probability, will eat and drink, and go to bed, and get up regularly, from one end of my work to the other; and the Squire is so kind-hearted that I see no likelihood of his throwing any kind of distress in the way of the approaching nuptials. In a word, I cannot foresee a single extraordinary event that is likely to occur in the whole term of my sojourn at the Hall.

7   I tell this honestly to the reader, lest, when he finds me dallying along, through every-day English scenes, he may hurry ahead, in hopes of meeting with some marvelous adventure further on. I invite him, on the contrary, to ramble gently on with me, as he would saunter out into the fields, stopping occasionally to gather a flower, or listen to a bird, or admire a prospect, without any anxiety to arrive at the end of his career. Should I, however, in the course of my wanderings about this old mansion see or hear anything curious, that might serve to vary the monotony of this every-day life, I shall not fail to report it for the reader’s entertainment:—  “For freshest wits I know will soon be wearie Of any book, how grave soe’er it be, Except it have odd matter, strange and merrie, Well sauc’d with lies and glaréd all with glee.”

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