University of Virginia Library

Washington Irving: An Unrecorded Periodical Publication
by
Daniel R. Barnes

Location of this previously unrecorded item may help to solve one of the minor mysteries of the Irving bibliography. Stanley T. Williams and Mary Ellen Edge, in A Bibliography of the Writings of Washington Irving (1936, p. 165), include the following hypothetical entry under "Periodicals and Collections":

An earlier bibliography, that of Langfield and Blackburn,[1] makes no mention of any contribution to Godey's.

Irving did, however, contribute a brief item to at least one lady's book — an item which seems, up to this time, to have escaped the notice of Irving bibliographers. In The Ladies' Repository for February, 1852, a sketch entitled "Our Changing Sky and Climate" appears under Irving's byline. The text, sufficiently brief to be given entire, is as follows.

Our Changing Sky and Climate.
by Washington Irving.

LET me, reader, say a word in favor of those vicissitudes, which are too often made the subject of exclusive repining. If they annoy us occasionally by changes from hot to cold, from wet to dry, they give us one of the most beautiful climates in the world. They give us the brilliant sunshine of the south of Europe with the fresh verdure o[sic] the north. They float our summer sky with clouds of gorgeous tints or fleecy whiteness, and send down cooling showers to refresh the panting earth and keep it green. Our seasons are all poetical; the phenomena of our heavens are full of sublimity and beauty. Winter with us has none of its proverbial gloom. It may have its howling winds, and thrilling frosts, and whirling snow-storms; but it has also its long intervals of cloudless sunshine, when the snow-clad earth gives redoubled brightness to the day; when at night the stars beam with intensest luster, or the moon floods the whole landscape with her most limpid radiance; and then the joyous outbreak of our spring, bursting at once into

leaf and blossom, redundant with vegetation, and vociferous with life! — and the splendors of our summer — its morning voluptuousness and evening glory — its airy palaces of sun-gilt clouds piled up in a deep azure sky; and its gusts of tempest of almost tropical grandeur, when the forked lightning and the bellowing thunder volley from the battlements of heaven and shake the sultry atmosphere — and the sublime melancholy of our autumn, magnificent in its decay, withering down the pomp and pride of a woodland country, yet reflecting back from its yellow forests the golden serenity of the sky — surely we may say that in our climate "the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth forth his handiwork; day unto day uttereth speech; and night unto night showeth knowledge."[2]

As far as I am able to determine, this is the only piece Irving ever contributed to The Ladies' Repository; it may well be the only contribution he ever made to any lady's book. It is perhaps significant that an appreciative essay of considerable length entitled "Washington Irving as a Writer" appeared in the July, 1848 issue of The Ladies' Repository and was, according to the index to that volume, the work of the editor himself, the Rev. Mr. B. F. Tefft (VIII [July, 1848] 217-220). The essay is characterized throughout by hyperbolic praise of Irving's virtues as both a man and a writer. But what is of interest here are Tefft's concluding remarks:

It does not seem improbable that such an "invitation" as this would eventually draw forth from Irving just such a sketch as "Our Changing Sky and Climate," a sketch which, notwithstanding its brevity, must have gone far toward fulfilling the fondest wishes of the Rev. Mr. Tefft.

Notes