It’s been a long time since I studied Washington Irving as an English major at Oneonta. It’s been a longer interval in fact than Rip Van Winkle’s reported 20 year sleep in the nearby mountains of that place, but I remember my lessons on Irving well. As an aspiring writer from Irving’s Hudson Valley turf who was also enamored with history and satire as Irving certainly was, Irving has always held my interest. I was tuned in to the lesson keenly. Irving mastered a technique, I remember my professor saying, developed by German folklorists long, long before whereby mundane explanations for the supernatural are planted by the storyteller to be “read between the lines” by the skeptical so that the story can be interpreted by two different audiences (the parent and the child in most cases, or the discerning and the gullible more generally) simultaneously in opposing ways. The mundane explanation for the supernatural headless horseman “planted” by Irving in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow for example was Brom Van Brunt’s jealousy over Ichabod Crane’s sexual interest in Katrina Van Tassel and motivation on the part of Brom to drive Ichabod out of the village through any means possible (here by scaring the bajeezus out of Ichabod by posing as the horseman) to disrupt Ichabod from marrying Katrina. The mundane explanation for Rip Van Winkle’s story on the other hand was that Rip made up the story of his 20 year sleep to cover his running away from his “termagant”wife. It’s clearly noted that Rip did not return to the village until after her death. I find it even more relavant that Rip fell asleep during the reign of King George III and woke up after American independence had been established. I believe Irving, a keen historical observer, with an indepth understanding of Revolutionary War history suppressed or otherwise (read his non-fiction writings you will see he identifies the major components of the 1776 Loyalist Plot to Assist the British Invasion of New York) is adding a whole other layer to the story. I believe he is lampooning an all too common occurrence that was verboten to report that readers of his time would readily get but later readers would miss. Who was Rip Van Winkle to the original audience of the story? Just another one of the many Dutch Loyalists who were too easily swayed by British recruiters who returned to the Catskills from Canada in the years following the Revolution with outrageous stories to tell to explain their disappearance.
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Here are some passages I will argue contain clues that Rip was persuaded by the most influential man in his village, Nicholas Vedder, a man who proudly displays a portrait of King George III outside his inn (and communicates his political opinions in secret code of pipe smoke) to leave the area to join the British behind enemy lines as a soldier:
“For a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village; which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of his majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the shade, of a long lazy summer’s day, talk listlessly over village gossip, or tell endless sleepy stories about nothing. But it would have been worth any statesman’s money to have heard the profound discussions that sometimes took place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands, from some passing traveller. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, a dapper learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the dictionary; and how sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after they had taken place.
“The opinions of this junto were completely controlled by Nicholas Vedder, a patriarch of the village, and landlord of the inn, at the door of which he took his seat from morning till night, just moving sufficiently to avoid the sun, and keep in the shade of a large tree; so that the neighbours could tell the hour by his movements as accurately as by a sun-dial. It is true, he was rarely heard to speak, but smoked his pipe incessantly. His adherents, however (for every great man has his adherents), perfectly understood him, and knew how to gather his opinions. When anything that was read or related displeased him, he was observed to smoke his pipe vehemently, and send forth short, frequent, and angry puffs; but when pleased, he would inhale the smoke slowly and tranquilly, and emit it in light and placid clouds, and sometimes taking the pipe from his mouth, and letting the fragrant vapour curl about his nose, would gravely nod his head in token of perfect approbation.”
Of course the ever-present fowling piece in Rip’s hand is the biggest clue to Rip’s secret identity as a soldier. When he sneaks off for the last time before his disappearance he has the gun in hand. Rip may never have been one to work hard on his own farm but Irving is clear to mention Rip never hesitated to help others with difficult labor. Certainly the work King George III needed to quell the rebellion of his colonies would be no easy task, but owing to Rip’s nature there would be no resistance from him to face that type of difficulty.
“...his only alternative to escape from the labour of the farm and the clamour of his wife, was to take gun in hand, and stroll away into the woods.”
It’s interesting to me here that Irving leads the reader to conclude Rip’s fancy fowling piece had been switched out with something far more basic and utilitarian, like a generic “firelock” used by a soldier in battle:
“He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean well-oiled fowling-piece, he found an old firelock lying by him, the barrel encrusted with rust...”
Rip returns to his village to find Nicholas Vedder---the man who proudly displayed a portrait of King George III who "completely controlled" the opinions of Rip and his cohorts---died 18 years earlier. Vedder's wooden grave marker has already rotted away. How is it that a man wealthy enough to own an inn did not have a stone to mark his grave unless he was met with misfortune during the intervening war? Was he subjected to confiscation of his property? Was he subjected to hanging like loyalist Dutchmen, Roosa and Middaugh in nearby Kingston? Vedder's Inn was now owned by a man named Jonathan Doolittle who refashioned the portrait of the King into one of George Washington.
Perhaps the biggest clue of Rip's loyalist identity comes from his own mouth. Perhaps Irving employed the oldest trick in the book---hiding the most important clue in plain site.
"'Alas! gentlemen,' cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, 'I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him!'"
"Here a general shout burst from the bystanders---'A Tory! a Tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him!'"
—James Robert Flannery Copyright 2018. All rights reserved.
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