Audience Response to A Tour On the Prairies in 1835

Abstract

M A R T H A D U L A Harvard University Audience Response to A Tour On the Prairies in 1835 Although Irving faithfully kept a journal, as was his habit, throughout his tour during the fall of 1832, he apparently had no plans for a book about the West at the time. In his introduction to A Tour on the Prairies, Irving wrote that he had made the trip “for the gratification of my curiosity.”1 But the American public would not be satisfied until Irving produced a book relating his adventures. A reviewer for the American Monthly Magazine in May of 1835 described Irving’s predicament: The movements of one who is so distinguished a favorite with his countrymen, were naturally watched by the public with some interest. The various journeyings became the subject o f newspaper remarks; and the eagerness with which he appeared to hurry from scene to scene, awakened a surmise in the reading world, that he must be engaged in some work of absorbing interest. Expectation was on the qui vive for a new Sketch Book; wheresoever his fancy led him, for the gratification o f a liberal curiosity, he found, at the last stage of hisjourney, that he was booked for a seat in the great public omnibus, and, whether he wished it or not, he must set out once more on his travels, with whatever stage-coach companions fortune might send him. It was o f no use to murmer; the public, who is the most willful creature in the world, had set its hearts upon having a book; they were determined to go over the same ground that he had, and all he had to do was just to sit down and make the best arrangements for the journey in his power.2 Irving tells us that he felt “like a poor actor, who finds himself announced for a part he had no thought of playing, and his appearance expected on the stage before he has committed a line to m em ory.”3 T he A m erican people were determ ined to reclaim their pre-em inent man of letters. So Irving “plucked a few leaves” out of his m em orandum book and sat down with pen 1Washington Irving, A Tour on the Prairies, ed. John McDermott (Norman, Oklahoma, 1956), p. 8. 2“The Prairies,” American Monthly Magazine, V, iii (May, 1835), 222. 3Irving, p. 9. 68 Western American Literature in hand. A Tour on the Prairies, published in Philadelphia in April, 1835, was the first book written and published by Irving in his native land since 1809.4 Irving made no literary claims for his offering. He described the book as “a simple narrative of every day occurrences; such as happen to every one who travels the prairies.”5 Notwithstanding Irving’s definition of the book, there seems to have been some concern among critics about the genre of A Tour on the Prairies. Philip Hone, a precentor of fashion and politics in New York, and a personal acquaintance of Irving, described the book in his diary in the entry for April 11, 1835, as “being a sort of easy w ritten jo u rn a l o f events . . ,”6 B ut the entry for A pril 14 indicates that Hone probably had not read A Tour on the Prairies on April 11. His description seems hardly more than a paraphrase of Irving’s own. W riting in the July, 1835 issue of North American Review, one critic came to this conclusion: It can scarcely be called a book o f travels, for there is too much painting of manners, and scenery, and too little statistics; — it is not a novel, for there is no story; and it is not a romance, for it is all true. It is a sort of sentimental journey, a romantic excursion, in which nearly all the elements of several different kinds of writing are beautifully and faithfully blended into a production olsui generis. 7 And the reviewer for American Monthly Magazine finally called the book “simply a picture of life — a picture drawn with the most easy and unaffected...