Is it not very significant, that he should have made
so little of the story of Rip Van Winkle? In his sketch, which has won
so wide a fame and given a lasting association to the Kaatskills, there
is not a suspicion of the immense pathos which the skill of an
industrious playwright and the genius of that rare actor, Mr. Jefferson,
have since developed from the tale. The Dame Van Winkle that we now know
is the creation of Mr. Boucicault; to him it is we owe that vigorous
character,--a scold, a tyrant to her husband, but nevertheless full of
relentful womanliness, and by the justice of her cause exciting our
sympathy almost as much as Rip himself does. In the story, she wears an
aspect of singular causelessness, and Rip's devotion to the drinking-can
is barely hinted: the marvellous tenderness, too, and joyful sorrow of
his return after the twenty years' sleep, are apparently not even
suspected by the writer. It is the simple wonder and picturesqueness of
the situation that charm him; and while in the drama we are moved to the
bottom of our hearts by the humorous tragicalness it casts over the
spectacle of conflicting passions, the only outcome of the written tale
is a passing reflection on the woe of being henpecked. "And it is a
common wish of all henpecked husbands in the neighborhood, when life
hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out
of Rip Van Winkle's flagon." To be sure, there is a hidden moral here,
of the folly of driving men to drunkenness; but it is so much obscured
as to suggest that this was of small moment in the writer's mind.
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