Description:

In his best literary style, the creator of Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow recalls a journey taken forty years earlier - "It was the dead of winter, our destination Marthas Vineyard! ... I was ushered into the parlour ... Beside the fireplace sat a tall odd looking personage in misty black ..."

Autograph Letter Signed "Washington Irving," 3 pages, 5.25" x 8", front & verso on two conjoined sheets. Sunnyside, December 17, 1853. To John Tucker Prince, Esqr. Folds. Portion torn away at right edge of third page, about 3.5" x 0.5", removing a few words and letters from the end of ten lines which are below in [brackets]. Mounting remnants on verso of third page. Good condition.

In part, "You ask for some anecdote of a journey I made with your father Captain Prince, about forty years since. It is a long time to look back but I recollect something that occurred just before we set out. It was the dead of winter, our destination Marthas Vineyard! - Something equal to the North Pole. I called at your fathers in a sleigh and was ushered into the parlour where I was kindly recieved by your mother who had a child or two about her; probably yourself for one. Beside the fireplace sat a tall odd looking personage in misty black who made me a very formal salutation. He sat gazing intently at me while I was conversing with your mother and at length delivered himself of some very erudite and sententious truisms ...

"In the course of my expedition with your [father] we crossed from the mainland to Marthas Vin[yard] in an open boat in another moist weather. [While] warming ourselves at a public house near the landing a tall lank fellow came in from fishing or boating, with a woe begone face an[d] dripping like a Mer man. He took off a Stov[e] hat soaking wet, that being about his head like the ears of an elephant and giving a whisk wi[th] it that nearly put out the fire just beginning to kindle 'I wish I was cleverly dead!" cried he. 'I don't care how cleverly you die, my friend replied your father, 'but I'd thank you not to kill the fire.' It was during this expedition that I gave your father the razors you speak of; which, however keen they may be, were nothing to compare in keenness to the wintery blasts we encountered ..."

Boston antiquarian John Tucker Prince (1806-1891) was the son of Capt. Samuel Prince.

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