Every Sunday, the Englishman is raised to heaven by the choir, and then taken to her bosom by Mother Earth.
In 1819, while on a five-year visit to England, American author Washington Irving began publishing his ‘Sketches’, which included the famous tale of Rip van Winkle. There were also a number of affectionately teasing reflections on the English. This extract from ‘Sunday in London’ picks up the Englishman as he makes his devotions in the parish church.
On a visit to an English parish church, American author Washington Irving was treated to an eye-opening contrast between Georgian society’s Old Money and her New.
In 1815, Washington Irving came over to England from the United States of America in a vain effort to rescue the family’s transatlantic trading business, a casualty of the War of 1812. Eager to get the measure of his new neighbours, he attended church one Sunday in an English village, and what he saw confirmed a theory he had been nursing for some time.
A hen-pecked, ne’er-do-well farmer from New York took off into the Catskill Mountains, and fell in with some very odd company.
The story of Rip van Winkle was written in 1818 by Washington Irving, an American who was visiting England at the time. It tells of an obliging but ne’er-do-well farmer of Dutch descent living in colonial America, who falls asleep in the mountains one evening and consequently misses a rather important event.