New York has grownKNICKERBOCKERNEW YORKInthese days, when New York has become a metropolitan city with a population of four million souls, and the old city has shrunk politically into the Borough of Manhattan, it is not easy to recall the obliterated outlines of the Town which was satirized by the vivaciousyoung men who wrote the “Salmagundi” papers. Unlike Rome, which has been rebuilt half a dozen times on its early site and largely out of its old materials, so that the city of to-day is a kind of palimpsest in stone, brick, and mortar, New York has grown by the process of destruction, and has become metropolitan through successive stages of self-effacement. Here and there one comes upon a building which has survived from the late colonial period, but no structure now standing bears witness to the taste or lack of taste of the Dutch settlers, and the streets preserve no traces of the old lanes and highways save an occasional name as misleading descriptively as the Bowery. Canal Street is as stolid a reminiscence of a water-channel as is the heavy warehouse frontage of Grub Street of the humorousor tragic traditions of literary Bohemia in the days of Mr. Pope and Dr. Johnson. New York has changed its form almost as often as, according to the physiologists, men change their bodies. It has kept certain characteristics which marked its youth and predicted the traits of its maturity; but its growth has been so great that the divergencies between the latest and the earliest city seem to be differences in kind rather than in degree.The New York in which Washington Irving was born in April, 1783, was still in the possession of British troops, who withdrew six months later, leaving a half-ruined city behind them. The population had been reduced from twenty thousand to ten thousand; shipping had deserted the captive town, and the wharves were rotting from disuse;streets which had been opened before the war to afford room for growth were desolate and forlorn, with that overgrowth of straggling weeds which is the final evidence of neglect. Many public and private buildings which had been used for military purposes were falling in ruins. The great fire of September, 1776, had left a large part of the western side of the little city a mass of ruins; and Broadway from Bowling Green to Trinity Church was a dreary waste of blackened walls and heaps of rubbish. There was no money in the city treasury, and the once growing town was apparently blighted. Other cities had been more active in the struggle for independence; none had suffered more severely from the devastation of war.“In June, 1787,” wrote Samuel Breck, “on my return from a residenceof a few years in France, I arrived at that city [New York] and found it a neglected place, built chiefly of wood, and in a state of prostration and decay. A dozen vessels in port; Broadway, from Trinity Church, inclusive, down to the Battery, in ruins, owing to a fire that had occurred when the city was occupied by the enemy during the later part of the war—the ruined walls of the houses standing on both sides of the way testifying to the poverty of the place five years after the conflagration; for although the war had ceased during that period, and the enemy had departed, no attempt had been made to rebuild them. In short, there was silence and inactivity everywhere.” Mr. Breck was mistaken about the date of the fire, but his description of the desolate city was accurate.In these depressing conditions, New York did not give itself up to gloomy misgivings; it had always been a cheerful, social community, and it was not long in recovering its prosperity and high spirits. Six years after the close of the war it was the Capital of the United States, the population had more than doubled, ships were in the harbor, grass no longer gave the streets a rustic aspect, and the tide of activity had reached the highest point in its history. There were nearly twenty-four thousand people living south of Reade Street on the west, and of Pike Street on the east; a swamp arrested the growth of the town along the East River. There were about twenty-four hundred slaves. The houses were mainly of English architecture, though peaked roofs and gable-ends to thestreets recalled the good old days of Dutch dominion, when a canal ran through Broad Street and broad-sterned Dutch vessels lay at anchor in the centre of the town.Politics ran high, and during elections language was used with far less restraint than at present. The first man sent to Congress from New York under the recently adopted national Constitution was Mr. John Lawrence, and a letter published in the “Daily Advertiser” in March, 1789, contains the following frank statement: “Of all the men who framed that monarchical, aristocratical, oligarchical, tyrannical, diabolical system of slavery, the New Constitution,One Halfwere lawyers. Of the men who represented, or rather misrepresented, this city and county in the late convention of this State, towhose wicked arts we may safely attribute the adoption of that diabolical system,sevenout of theninewere lawyers.... And what crowns the wickedness of these wicked lawyers is, that a great majority of them throughout the State are violently opposed to ourGOODandGREAT HEADand never-failing friend of the city and city interests, the presentGOVERNOR.“Beware, beware, beware of Lawyers!”Very pleasant things were said about the New York of 1789 when, at the end of a three months’ session of the United States Congress, it was announced that only one member had been ill. After commenting on its nearness to the ocean and the sweetening of its air by abundant verdure, a charming picture is evoked by the statement that the residentson the west side of Broadway are “saluted by fragrant odors from the apple orchards and buckwheat fields in blossom on the pleasant banks of the Jersey shore.”The little city was already charged with extravagance and frivolity, and the details of these offences are not lacking. One reads of blue satin gowns with white satin petticoats, large Italian gauze handkerchiefs with satin border stripes worn about the neck, completed by a head-dress of “pouf of gauze in the form of a globe, the headpiece of which was made of white satin having a double wing, in large plaits, and trimmed with a large wreath of artificial roses.” There were shoes of blue satin adorned by rose-colored rosettes, and muffs of wolfskin with knots of scarlet ribbon. The gentlemen of theperiod were arrayed with equal splendor: bottle-green, pearl, scarlet, purple, mulberry, and garnet were among the colors of cloths advertised by a local tailor on Hanover Square; while waistcoats fairly glowed with brilliant hues and brocaded and spangled buttons. Beaver and castor hats were in vogue, and superior boots were made by Mr. Thomas Garner, of Pearl Street, whose proud claim to the patronage of the fashionable was that he had worked for the first nobility in England. It cost approximately seventy-five dollars to dress a lady’s hair every day in the year; and there were dentists who pulled the teeth of the poorgratisbetween the hours of six and nine on the mornings of Monday and Thursday. The sociability and hospitality of the city made a deep impression on Noah Webster, who wasalso struck by the absence of affectation and of social snobbery.Lectures appear to have been few in number and serious in theme; the city, which took its pleasures comfortably, took its opportunities of enlightenment sparingly and in a heroic temper. There appears to have been but one candidate on the lecture platform for public approval in this field during the winter of 1789, and he is described as “a man more than thirty years an Atheist.” The lecture was delivered at Aaron Aorson’s tavern, and tickets were to be had from the Aldermen!The play enjoyed greater popular favor, but the John Street Theatre was without competition until 1798, when the Old Park Theatre was opened. During the season of 1789, William Dunlap put several home-made American dramason the stage. He was the prolific author of forty-nine plays, which stand to the credit of his industry if not of his genius. These dramas were the premature births of the Genius of the American stage, and none of them survives. They were very faint prophecies of the interesting dramatic movement now in progress; but one of them, “Darby’s Return,” achieved the rare distinction of evoking a laugh from Washington—an occurrence so unusual that it stimulated a writer in the “Daily Advertiser” to report it in the most stately English: “Our Adored Ruler seemed to unbend and for the moment give himself to the pleasures arising from the gratifications of the two most noble organs of sense, the Eye and the Ear!”The Musical Society gave an occasionalrecital, and there were subscription concerts under the management of local music-teachers. The young gentlemen at Columbia College were delivering Commencement orations “On the Progress and Causes of Civilization” and “On the Rising Glory of America.” There were nine publishers and booksellers in the city, and in the year of Irving’s birth one of them announced “The First American Novel” under the portentous title, “The Power of Sympathy; or, the Triumph of Nature.” The Society Library, disrupted by the war, was re-established, and a circulating library organized. William Dunlap, the playwright, painted portraits and, later, became one of the founders of the National Academy of Design. Mr. Edward Savage and Mr. Joseph Wright followed the same profession, and Washingtonsat for all three. The city was kept informed of events by five newspapers; a magazine had been born prematurely and expired after a brief and unimportant life. The journalistic style of the day was of an eloquence that is happily illustrated by a description of one of the barges which escorted Washington on his voyage across the bay to New York to attend his inauguration: “The voices of the ladies were as much superior to the flutes that played with the stroke of the oars in Cleopatra’s silken-corded barge, as the very superior and glorious water scene of New York bay exceeds the Cydnus in all its pride.”The two-story house in which Irving was born, at No. 131 William Street, about half-way between Fulton and John Streets, was pulled down ten yearsbefore his death, and the house directly across the street, in which he spent his childhood, has shared its fate. The latter was larger and afforded greater facilities for boyish gymnastics. There were front and rear buildings with a narrow structure between which was hardly more than a passage, and it was from the sloping roof at the rear that Irving made his perilous descents when he set out to enjoy the forbidden pleasures of the John Street Theatre. George William Curtis tells a delightful story of a boy in Philadelphia, whose father, like the elder Irving, was of a very serious turn of mind, and who, by way of youthful reaction, secretly frequented the forbidden playhouse. “John,” said the father, “is this dreadful thing true that I hear of thee? Hast thou been to see the play-actressFrances Kemble?” “Yes, father.” “I hope thee has not been more than once, John.” “Yes, father,” was the honest if somewhat discouraging answer; “more than thirty times.”The easy-going temper of the metropolis to which Irving was to give a lasting expression is still further indicated by the story that in order to escape the rigid requirements of his father’s Presbyterian faith the boy had himself confirmed in Trinity Church. His temper was genial and kindly, and the mingled sentiment and humor which were to give his books a quality American writing had so far lacked, made him a loiterer and an observer rather than an arduous and methodical student. New York was the gateway to the beautiful country of Dutch settlement and tradition on the banks of the Hudson, and the gun andfishing-rod were the instruments of exploration with which the boy who was to write “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle” carried his discoveries into the heart of a region in which it was always afternoon. He had read “Orlando Furioso” and had played the knight with great fire and gallantry in the back yard on John Street; he had surreptitiously saved candle-ends and read the moving adventures of Sindbad and Robinson Crusoe in forbidden places and at improper hours, and the thirst for travel was on him. He wandered about the pier-heads when he should have been poring over textbooks, and watched lessening sails with eager desire to fare with them to the ends of the earth. He was, in a word, taking that course in romance, adventure, and dreaming which boys of histemperament and genius have elected from the beginning of time, to the sore but fortunate disappointment of their elders. His brothers went through Columbia College, but he went up the Hudson and discovered to the imagination the river which Hudson had discovered to the eye. Diedrich Knickerbocker was last seen, it will be remembered, by the passengers in the stage for Albany!The literary temperament in Irving was not without the confirmation of the literary impulse, and while he was still in his teens he began to try his hand at social satire, a form of literature which is practised only by men of city breeding and interest. In the “Morning Chronicle,” of which his brother Peter was editor and proprietor, he published, in 1802, a series of short papers dealingwith the fashions and foibles of the town after the manner of the “Spectator” and “Tatler,” and especially with the manners of the actors and their auditors. They were boyish performances, but they showed sensibility and humor, and a chivalrous attitude toward women. Irving’s health, which had been uncertain, was established by a residence of two years in Europe, where he saw countries and peoples with infinite zest not only in the picturesque Old World but in the range and variety of character, the broad contrasts, the mingled tragedy and comedy of life in a more highly organized society. “I am a young man and in Paris,” he wrote to a friend at home, and he was happy in a wholesome appetite for a more picturesque and vivid life than he had enjoyed in the little provincial city at the mouthof the Hudson. When he returned in 1806 it was to find a group of companions whose knowledge of the great world was less than his, but who were equally ready for work or for mischief in a little provincial city which had developed what may be called a town-consciousness.It was still bounded on the north by Anthony and Hester Streets; Greenwich Village, a pleasant suburban village through which Christopher Street now passes, was a place of refuge from the plague for families fleeing from the city; the State prison was there, and there were faint streets budding in the adjacent farms. Broome Street had been laid out; Astor Place and Greenwich Street, Mr. Jarvis tells us, were lanes; the latter had attained the dignity of a fashionable drive, and opulentcitizens drove out to Greenwich Village on pleasant afternoons, as to-day they motor to West Point or Peekskill! The seats of fashion were to be found on the Battery, which would have remained the most delightful locality for residence in New York if the people of the metropolis had not conceived a repugnance to living in near proximity to business quarters. Lower Broadway, Upper Pearl and Nassau Streets were of high respectability; and Broadway had been paved as far as the City Hall. Beyond lay charming country roads, occasional country houses to which the leading families retreated from the summer heat, and thrifty farms whose owners were happily ignorant of the enormous future values of their fields.The American imagination, which has since built so many cities over night inthe newer sections of the country, did not slumber, however, even in a city in which Dutch reluctance to move faster than the fact was so large a factor, and a map made by Mangin in 1803 carries the Boston Road far north through a network of supposititious streets that lay across the broad fields owned by Mr. Bayard, Mr. Rutgers, Mr. Lispenard, Mr. De Peyster, and other well-known citizens, and obliterates as by magic the Swamp; the Collect, or fresh-water pond; and the salt meadows of the earlier maps.The Collect was not, however, so easily dealt with. It was a marsh lying across the island from Roosevelt Slip to the Hudson at what is now the foot of Canal Street. The focal point of this marsh was a pond which found an outlet through the Swamp where leatherhas had its shrine these many years, and whence the first Brooklyn Bridge takes its flight over the East River. The Swamp had been drained and the water from the pond flowed along the course of the present Canal Street; but the pond was still to be disposed of. It was very deep and it was proposed at one time to connect it with the two rivers by canals, which would have made New Amsterdam reminiscent of old Amsterdam; but it was finally filled in by leveling the high ground, and adventurous youths and maidens who had been accustomed, on pleasant afternoons, to venture into the country beyond the City Hall lost a convenient excuse for Sabbath-day excursions.It is amusing to find a pleasure-garden bearing the Old World name of Ranelagh on the older maps; and OldVauxhall, which stood originally at the corner of Warren and Greenwich Streets in a house built by Sir Peter Warren, was also a public garden, patterned after its famous original in London and kept by Sam Fraunces, at one time a steward in the employ of Washington, and whose connection with the old tavern which still stands ensures his name a local immortality. Later this pleasure-ground covered the section between Broadway and the Bowery of which the Astor Library was the centre. The chief cattle-market was on the Bowery somewhat south of the garden. There were various road-houses along the East River where oysters and turtles were cooked with great skill. Fishing and water parties in summer and sleighing parties in winter found the best of fare in these houses, with their pleasantgrounds. It was the day of the old-fashioned chaise, and there was a bridge on the Boston Post Road at about Third Avenue and Seventy-seventh Street which bore the suggestive name of the Kissing-bridge. The exaction of this kind of toll appears to have been widely practised; not only bridges but gates and stiles were penalized for women. The Rev. Mr. Burnaby sagely observed that this custom was “curious, yet not displeasing.” New York had spread out since Irving’s birth, but it was still a neighborly little city, of a social turn and disposed to make easy terms with life.In 1809 Thomas Paine had just died in Greenwich Village, at what is now No. 293 Bleecker Street, where he was often to be seen at the open window reading, with his book in close proximityto a decanter of what appeared to be brandy or rum. It is reported that two clergymen who visited him with the hope of changing his attitude toward Christianity were abruptly dismissed and the housekeeper received orders to bar the door against such visitors. “If God does not change his mind, I’m sure no human can,” was her sage comment, and the author of “The Age of Reason” was troubled no more.And there was a bridge on the Boston Post Road
New York has grown
Inthese days, when New York has become a metropolitan city with a population of four million souls, and the old city has shrunk politically into the Borough of Manhattan, it is not easy to recall the obliterated outlines of the Town which was satirized by the vivaciousyoung men who wrote the “Salmagundi” papers. Unlike Rome, which has been rebuilt half a dozen times on its early site and largely out of its old materials, so that the city of to-day is a kind of palimpsest in stone, brick, and mortar, New York has grown by the process of destruction, and has become metropolitan through successive stages of self-effacement. Here and there one comes upon a building which has survived from the late colonial period, but no structure now standing bears witness to the taste or lack of taste of the Dutch settlers, and the streets preserve no traces of the old lanes and highways save an occasional name as misleading descriptively as the Bowery. Canal Street is as stolid a reminiscence of a water-channel as is the heavy warehouse frontage of Grub Street of the humorousor tragic traditions of literary Bohemia in the days of Mr. Pope and Dr. Johnson. New York has changed its form almost as often as, according to the physiologists, men change their bodies. It has kept certain characteristics which marked its youth and predicted the traits of its maturity; but its growth has been so great that the divergencies between the latest and the earliest city seem to be differences in kind rather than in degree.
The New York in which Washington Irving was born in April, 1783, was still in the possession of British troops, who withdrew six months later, leaving a half-ruined city behind them. The population had been reduced from twenty thousand to ten thousand; shipping had deserted the captive town, and the wharves were rotting from disuse;streets which had been opened before the war to afford room for growth were desolate and forlorn, with that overgrowth of straggling weeds which is the final evidence of neglect. Many public and private buildings which had been used for military purposes were falling in ruins. The great fire of September, 1776, had left a large part of the western side of the little city a mass of ruins; and Broadway from Bowling Green to Trinity Church was a dreary waste of blackened walls and heaps of rubbish. There was no money in the city treasury, and the once growing town was apparently blighted. Other cities had been more active in the struggle for independence; none had suffered more severely from the devastation of war.
“In June, 1787,” wrote Samuel Breck, “on my return from a residenceof a few years in France, I arrived at that city [New York] and found it a neglected place, built chiefly of wood, and in a state of prostration and decay. A dozen vessels in port; Broadway, from Trinity Church, inclusive, down to the Battery, in ruins, owing to a fire that had occurred when the city was occupied by the enemy during the later part of the war—the ruined walls of the houses standing on both sides of the way testifying to the poverty of the place five years after the conflagration; for although the war had ceased during that period, and the enemy had departed, no attempt had been made to rebuild them. In short, there was silence and inactivity everywhere.” Mr. Breck was mistaken about the date of the fire, but his description of the desolate city was accurate.
In these depressing conditions, New York did not give itself up to gloomy misgivings; it had always been a cheerful, social community, and it was not long in recovering its prosperity and high spirits. Six years after the close of the war it was the Capital of the United States, the population had more than doubled, ships were in the harbor, grass no longer gave the streets a rustic aspect, and the tide of activity had reached the highest point in its history. There were nearly twenty-four thousand people living south of Reade Street on the west, and of Pike Street on the east; a swamp arrested the growth of the town along the East River. There were about twenty-four hundred slaves. The houses were mainly of English architecture, though peaked roofs and gable-ends to thestreets recalled the good old days of Dutch dominion, when a canal ran through Broad Street and broad-sterned Dutch vessels lay at anchor in the centre of the town.
Politics ran high, and during elections language was used with far less restraint than at present. The first man sent to Congress from New York under the recently adopted national Constitution was Mr. John Lawrence, and a letter published in the “Daily Advertiser” in March, 1789, contains the following frank statement: “Of all the men who framed that monarchical, aristocratical, oligarchical, tyrannical, diabolical system of slavery, the New Constitution,One Halfwere lawyers. Of the men who represented, or rather misrepresented, this city and county in the late convention of this State, towhose wicked arts we may safely attribute the adoption of that diabolical system,sevenout of theninewere lawyers.... And what crowns the wickedness of these wicked lawyers is, that a great majority of them throughout the State are violently opposed to ourGOODandGREAT HEADand never-failing friend of the city and city interests, the presentGOVERNOR.
“Beware, beware, beware of Lawyers!”
Very pleasant things were said about the New York of 1789 when, at the end of a three months’ session of the United States Congress, it was announced that only one member had been ill. After commenting on its nearness to the ocean and the sweetening of its air by abundant verdure, a charming picture is evoked by the statement that the residentson the west side of Broadway are “saluted by fragrant odors from the apple orchards and buckwheat fields in blossom on the pleasant banks of the Jersey shore.”
The little city was already charged with extravagance and frivolity, and the details of these offences are not lacking. One reads of blue satin gowns with white satin petticoats, large Italian gauze handkerchiefs with satin border stripes worn about the neck, completed by a head-dress of “pouf of gauze in the form of a globe, the headpiece of which was made of white satin having a double wing, in large plaits, and trimmed with a large wreath of artificial roses.” There were shoes of blue satin adorned by rose-colored rosettes, and muffs of wolfskin with knots of scarlet ribbon. The gentlemen of theperiod were arrayed with equal splendor: bottle-green, pearl, scarlet, purple, mulberry, and garnet were among the colors of cloths advertised by a local tailor on Hanover Square; while waistcoats fairly glowed with brilliant hues and brocaded and spangled buttons. Beaver and castor hats were in vogue, and superior boots were made by Mr. Thomas Garner, of Pearl Street, whose proud claim to the patronage of the fashionable was that he had worked for the first nobility in England. It cost approximately seventy-five dollars to dress a lady’s hair every day in the year; and there were dentists who pulled the teeth of the poorgratisbetween the hours of six and nine on the mornings of Monday and Thursday. The sociability and hospitality of the city made a deep impression on Noah Webster, who wasalso struck by the absence of affectation and of social snobbery.
Lectures appear to have been few in number and serious in theme; the city, which took its pleasures comfortably, took its opportunities of enlightenment sparingly and in a heroic temper. There appears to have been but one candidate on the lecture platform for public approval in this field during the winter of 1789, and he is described as “a man more than thirty years an Atheist.” The lecture was delivered at Aaron Aorson’s tavern, and tickets were to be had from the Aldermen!
The play enjoyed greater popular favor, but the John Street Theatre was without competition until 1798, when the Old Park Theatre was opened. During the season of 1789, William Dunlap put several home-made American dramason the stage. He was the prolific author of forty-nine plays, which stand to the credit of his industry if not of his genius. These dramas were the premature births of the Genius of the American stage, and none of them survives. They were very faint prophecies of the interesting dramatic movement now in progress; but one of them, “Darby’s Return,” achieved the rare distinction of evoking a laugh from Washington—an occurrence so unusual that it stimulated a writer in the “Daily Advertiser” to report it in the most stately English: “Our Adored Ruler seemed to unbend and for the moment give himself to the pleasures arising from the gratifications of the two most noble organs of sense, the Eye and the Ear!”
The Musical Society gave an occasionalrecital, and there were subscription concerts under the management of local music-teachers. The young gentlemen at Columbia College were delivering Commencement orations “On the Progress and Causes of Civilization” and “On the Rising Glory of America.” There were nine publishers and booksellers in the city, and in the year of Irving’s birth one of them announced “The First American Novel” under the portentous title, “The Power of Sympathy; or, the Triumph of Nature.” The Society Library, disrupted by the war, was re-established, and a circulating library organized. William Dunlap, the playwright, painted portraits and, later, became one of the founders of the National Academy of Design. Mr. Edward Savage and Mr. Joseph Wright followed the same profession, and Washingtonsat for all three. The city was kept informed of events by five newspapers; a magazine had been born prematurely and expired after a brief and unimportant life. The journalistic style of the day was of an eloquence that is happily illustrated by a description of one of the barges which escorted Washington on his voyage across the bay to New York to attend his inauguration: “The voices of the ladies were as much superior to the flutes that played with the stroke of the oars in Cleopatra’s silken-corded barge, as the very superior and glorious water scene of New York bay exceeds the Cydnus in all its pride.”
The two-story house in which Irving was born, at No. 131 William Street, about half-way between Fulton and John Streets, was pulled down ten yearsbefore his death, and the house directly across the street, in which he spent his childhood, has shared its fate. The latter was larger and afforded greater facilities for boyish gymnastics. There were front and rear buildings with a narrow structure between which was hardly more than a passage, and it was from the sloping roof at the rear that Irving made his perilous descents when he set out to enjoy the forbidden pleasures of the John Street Theatre. George William Curtis tells a delightful story of a boy in Philadelphia, whose father, like the elder Irving, was of a very serious turn of mind, and who, by way of youthful reaction, secretly frequented the forbidden playhouse. “John,” said the father, “is this dreadful thing true that I hear of thee? Hast thou been to see the play-actressFrances Kemble?” “Yes, father.” “I hope thee has not been more than once, John.” “Yes, father,” was the honest if somewhat discouraging answer; “more than thirty times.”
The easy-going temper of the metropolis to which Irving was to give a lasting expression is still further indicated by the story that in order to escape the rigid requirements of his father’s Presbyterian faith the boy had himself confirmed in Trinity Church. His temper was genial and kindly, and the mingled sentiment and humor which were to give his books a quality American writing had so far lacked, made him a loiterer and an observer rather than an arduous and methodical student. New York was the gateway to the beautiful country of Dutch settlement and tradition on the banks of the Hudson, and the gun andfishing-rod were the instruments of exploration with which the boy who was to write “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle” carried his discoveries into the heart of a region in which it was always afternoon. He had read “Orlando Furioso” and had played the knight with great fire and gallantry in the back yard on John Street; he had surreptitiously saved candle-ends and read the moving adventures of Sindbad and Robinson Crusoe in forbidden places and at improper hours, and the thirst for travel was on him. He wandered about the pier-heads when he should have been poring over textbooks, and watched lessening sails with eager desire to fare with them to the ends of the earth. He was, in a word, taking that course in romance, adventure, and dreaming which boys of histemperament and genius have elected from the beginning of time, to the sore but fortunate disappointment of their elders. His brothers went through Columbia College, but he went up the Hudson and discovered to the imagination the river which Hudson had discovered to the eye. Diedrich Knickerbocker was last seen, it will be remembered, by the passengers in the stage for Albany!
The literary temperament in Irving was not without the confirmation of the literary impulse, and while he was still in his teens he began to try his hand at social satire, a form of literature which is practised only by men of city breeding and interest. In the “Morning Chronicle,” of which his brother Peter was editor and proprietor, he published, in 1802, a series of short papers dealingwith the fashions and foibles of the town after the manner of the “Spectator” and “Tatler,” and especially with the manners of the actors and their auditors. They were boyish performances, but they showed sensibility and humor, and a chivalrous attitude toward women. Irving’s health, which had been uncertain, was established by a residence of two years in Europe, where he saw countries and peoples with infinite zest not only in the picturesque Old World but in the range and variety of character, the broad contrasts, the mingled tragedy and comedy of life in a more highly organized society. “I am a young man and in Paris,” he wrote to a friend at home, and he was happy in a wholesome appetite for a more picturesque and vivid life than he had enjoyed in the little provincial city at the mouthof the Hudson. When he returned in 1806 it was to find a group of companions whose knowledge of the great world was less than his, but who were equally ready for work or for mischief in a little provincial city which had developed what may be called a town-consciousness.
It was still bounded on the north by Anthony and Hester Streets; Greenwich Village, a pleasant suburban village through which Christopher Street now passes, was a place of refuge from the plague for families fleeing from the city; the State prison was there, and there were faint streets budding in the adjacent farms. Broome Street had been laid out; Astor Place and Greenwich Street, Mr. Jarvis tells us, were lanes; the latter had attained the dignity of a fashionable drive, and opulentcitizens drove out to Greenwich Village on pleasant afternoons, as to-day they motor to West Point or Peekskill! The seats of fashion were to be found on the Battery, which would have remained the most delightful locality for residence in New York if the people of the metropolis had not conceived a repugnance to living in near proximity to business quarters. Lower Broadway, Upper Pearl and Nassau Streets were of high respectability; and Broadway had been paved as far as the City Hall. Beyond lay charming country roads, occasional country houses to which the leading families retreated from the summer heat, and thrifty farms whose owners were happily ignorant of the enormous future values of their fields.
The American imagination, which has since built so many cities over night inthe newer sections of the country, did not slumber, however, even in a city in which Dutch reluctance to move faster than the fact was so large a factor, and a map made by Mangin in 1803 carries the Boston Road far north through a network of supposititious streets that lay across the broad fields owned by Mr. Bayard, Mr. Rutgers, Mr. Lispenard, Mr. De Peyster, and other well-known citizens, and obliterates as by magic the Swamp; the Collect, or fresh-water pond; and the salt meadows of the earlier maps.
The Collect was not, however, so easily dealt with. It was a marsh lying across the island from Roosevelt Slip to the Hudson at what is now the foot of Canal Street. The focal point of this marsh was a pond which found an outlet through the Swamp where leatherhas had its shrine these many years, and whence the first Brooklyn Bridge takes its flight over the East River. The Swamp had been drained and the water from the pond flowed along the course of the present Canal Street; but the pond was still to be disposed of. It was very deep and it was proposed at one time to connect it with the two rivers by canals, which would have made New Amsterdam reminiscent of old Amsterdam; but it was finally filled in by leveling the high ground, and adventurous youths and maidens who had been accustomed, on pleasant afternoons, to venture into the country beyond the City Hall lost a convenient excuse for Sabbath-day excursions.
It is amusing to find a pleasure-garden bearing the Old World name of Ranelagh on the older maps; and OldVauxhall, which stood originally at the corner of Warren and Greenwich Streets in a house built by Sir Peter Warren, was also a public garden, patterned after its famous original in London and kept by Sam Fraunces, at one time a steward in the employ of Washington, and whose connection with the old tavern which still stands ensures his name a local immortality. Later this pleasure-ground covered the section between Broadway and the Bowery of which the Astor Library was the centre. The chief cattle-market was on the Bowery somewhat south of the garden. There were various road-houses along the East River where oysters and turtles were cooked with great skill. Fishing and water parties in summer and sleighing parties in winter found the best of fare in these houses, with their pleasantgrounds. It was the day of the old-fashioned chaise, and there was a bridge on the Boston Post Road at about Third Avenue and Seventy-seventh Street which bore the suggestive name of the Kissing-bridge. The exaction of this kind of toll appears to have been widely practised; not only bridges but gates and stiles were penalized for women. The Rev. Mr. Burnaby sagely observed that this custom was “curious, yet not displeasing.” New York had spread out since Irving’s birth, but it was still a neighborly little city, of a social turn and disposed to make easy terms with life.
In 1809 Thomas Paine had just died in Greenwich Village, at what is now No. 293 Bleecker Street, where he was often to be seen at the open window reading, with his book in close proximityto a decanter of what appeared to be brandy or rum. It is reported that two clergymen who visited him with the hope of changing his attitude toward Christianity were abruptly dismissed and the housekeeper received orders to bar the door against such visitors. “If God does not change his mind, I’m sure no human can,” was her sage comment, and the author of “The Age of Reason” was troubled no more.
And there was a bridge on the Boston Post Road
* * * * *
The old Government House.
Aftera stormy passage of sixty-four days, not lacking in serious perils, Irving landed in New York in the wake of a heavy snowstorm in February, 1806, in high spirits and ready for such pleasures as the little town afforded. One of his biographers has described it as a “handy” city; it was large enough to furnish ample variety of character studies and many opportunities for good-fellowship of an intimate, easy-going sort; there was an air of conviviality about the place, but there waslittle serious dissipation. It was a very pleasant moment in the growth of the metropolis which had become, in a quiet, provincial way, a town in the special sense in which that word connotes a group of people numerous enough to constitute a society, fond of the same pleasures, interested in local incidents and amusements, sufficiently intimate to have formed a code of social standards and manners. In a word, in the New York of Irving’s early maturity, as in the London of the time of Steele and Addison, there was an organized society, open to clever portraiture and brisk satire; supplying at the same time the material and the audience for local wit and humor. It was easy to know everybody in the society of the town, and easy to get about the place. The tone was not intellectual, thoughthe city never lacked men and women of distinguished ability and social cultivation. It was a well-bred and hospitable society, with a keen relish for pleasure. There were numberless dinners and suppers, much less costly and elaborate than those of to-day, and more informal and merry. The country was convivial in all sections outside New England, and the social use of wine was over-generous. In America, as in England, getting under the table was an indiscretion, not a fault. One of Irving’s friends reported that, after a festive occasion, he had fallen through an open grating on his homeward way and was disposed to feel very much depressed by the darkness and solitude; but, one after another, several fellow-guests joined him in the same manner, and the hilarity was prolonged until dawn.
Like many other young men whose ultimate good or evil fortune it was to write books, Irving was admitted to the bar at about the same time that the sign, “William Cullen Bryant, attorney and counsellor at Law,” appeared in the little village of Cummington in western Massachusetts. In after years his estimate of his legal acquirements was indicated by his quoting the comments of two well-known lawyers who were examining students for admission to practise law. “Martin,” said one of these examiners, referring to an aspirant who had acquitted himself very lamely—“Martin, I think he knows alittlelaw.” “Make it stronger,” was the reply; “damned little.” Irving had loitered and dreamed on the water-front as a boy when he ought to have been at his books; and now, at the gateway of hiscareer, the literary temperament turned him toward congenial fellowship rather than arduous study. There was plenty of material for comradeship in the town, and young men of spirit instinctively gathered about him. It was a very kindly and wholesome Bohemia in which they disported themselves in the halcyon days of a fleeting youth. They regarded themselves as “men about town” of the deepest dye, but it was a very innocent town in which they amused themselves, and they all bore honorable names in later and more serious years.
Henry Ogden, Henry Brevoort, James K. Paulding, John and Gouverneur Kemble, Peter and Washington Irving, the leaders of this vivacious company, were members of families who had long been foremost in the social life of the city, and they were far frombeing the “roistering blades” they fondly thought themselves to be. They were young men of spirit, generous tastes, and no little cultivation. They combined with great success devotion to literature and social activity. Irving speaks of himself as “a champion at the tea-parties,” and the “nine worthies,” or “lads of Kilkenny,” as he called them, shone in the society of what was then known as “the gentler sex” no less than on the festive occasions when they celebrated their youth in private revels. The old country house built by Nicholas Gouverneur, from whom it had descended to Gouverneur Kemble, was the favorite out-of-town haunt of these lively youths. It had a pleasant site on the banks of the Passaic not far from Newark, and is celebrated in the “Salmagundi” papers as Cockloft Hall. Anold-time air hung about the place, with its antique furniture and generous endowment of family portraits. It was cared for by two old servants of long standing in the family, and a negro boy, and it afforded a well-set stage for the lively comedy which these vivacious youths made of life in the golden hour of coming into the heritage of youth and pleasure and Letters. “Who would have thought,” wrote Irving in his sixty-seventh year to the owner of the old Hall, “that we should ever have lived to be two such respectable old gentlemen?”, and many years after the curtain had fallen on the gaiety and fun of those hilarious days, Peter Irving often recalled the Saturdays at the Hall, when “we sported on the lawn until fatigued, and sometimes fell sociably into a general nap in the drawing-room in thedusk of the evening.” In town the “lads of Kilkenny” often assembled at Dyde’s, a tavern of good standing in Park Row; a convenient place for after-theatre suppers.
To riot at Dyde’s on imperial champagne,And then scour our city—the peace to maintain,
To riot at Dyde’s on imperial champagne,And then scour our city—the peace to maintain,
To riot at Dyde’s on imperial champagne,And then scour our city—the peace to maintain,
To riot at Dyde’s on imperial champagne,
And then scour our city—the peace to maintain,
was an occupation which these gentlemen pursued with great success. When the financial resources of the revelers ran low they reduced the scale of expenditure by resorting to an unpretentious porter-house at the corner of Nassau and John Streets, not far from the theatre, where they indulged in what they depreciatingly called “Blackguard Suppers.” The modern misogynist habit of living in clubs and associating with one sex only had not come into vogue in those sociable and informal days, and the young men who formedthe Knickerbocker group were on good terms with the belles of the day, and appear to have been much in evidence at social functions. Irving asked Henry Ogden, who had sailed for China, to “pick up two or three queer little pretty things that would cost nothing and be acceptable to the girls,” and there are hints of a Chinese supper later.
The first number of “Salmagundi,” the initial work of the so-called Knickerbocker School, was published on January 24, 1807, preceded by some clever and mystifying announcements in the “Evening Post.” It appeared fortnightly through the year, and came to an untimely end in January, 1808, not because its popularity was waning, but because its publisher was disposed to deal in an arbitrary fashion with its high-spirited editors. The idea of aperiodical which would deal freely and frankly, in a satiric or humorous spirit, with the fashions and foibles of the town originated with Irving, who secured his brother William and his friend James K. Paulding as associates in what turned out to be a more extended and elaborate frolic than they had hitherto planned. They proposed to amuse themselves with the town, and they succeeded for a year in keeping the little city on tip-toe expectation, not unmixed with apprehension; for “Salmagundi,” while entirely free from personalities and scandal, was keen in its comments on manners and local social standards. It was written in the manner of the “Spectator”; but New York did not furnish the varied and brilliant material which London offered Steele and Addison, and the Irvings and Pauldinglacked the sophisticated charm, the intimate and adroit skill of their predecessors. They were, moreover, very young apprentices, and must not be judged by the standards set by the masters of the art, whose comments on passing fashions have become contributions to literature. The banter was somewhat heavy-handed and the humor gave little promise of the lightness of Irving’s later manner, or of the clear-cut and nimble wit of Lowell and Holmes. It bore the stamp of a provincial society and was rollicking and hilarious rather than keen and pungent.
Irving had no illusions about its quality. The “North American Review,” however, described “Salmagundi” as a production of extraordinary merit. Eleven years after the last number appeared, Irving wrote to Brevoort that,while it was pardonable as a youthful production, it was full of errors, puerilities, and imperfections; and in a letter to Irving, Paulding said: “I know you consider old Sal. a sort of saucy, flippant trollope belonging to nobody and not worth fathering.” “Salmagundi” had the crudity of youth, but it also had its high spirits, its gaiety, and its audacious confidence in its own opinions. It was frolicsome and joyous and not devoid of literary grace and skill, and will remain the happiest contemporary record of old New York.
The old Government House, which had been built for the President of the United States, faced Bowling Green when “Salmagundi” published the chapter entitled “A Tour in Broadway.” This building passed through a period of great distinction as the residenceof Governor George Clinton and of Chief Justice Jay, and then lost prestige as the local post-office. In its cellar were stored the statues of gods and goddesses belonging to the homeless Academy of Arts. The lead statue of George the Third, which formerly stood on Bowling Green, had been pulled down and run into bullets to be aimed at his Majesty’s troops, and the Green had been put to bucolic uses as a pasturage for cows. Cortlandt Street corner was a famous vantage-ground from which to see the belles go by in pleasant weather, on shopping bent. The City Hall, according to “Salmagundi,” was a resort for young lawyers, not because they had business there, but because they had no business anywhere else.
There was an advanced wing of society which practised the latest arts ofpleasure imported from the Old World. The great god Style already had its votaries, and then, as now, many were the sacrifices of good taste and refined manners offered at its painted paste-board shrine. “Salmagundi” found a rich yield of satire in the imitative instinct which shaped many of the customs and social habits of the hour. It informs us that
Style, that with pride each empty bosom swells,Puffs boys to manhood, little girls to belles.
Style, that with pride each empty bosom swells,Puffs boys to manhood, little girls to belles.
Style, that with pride each empty bosom swells,Puffs boys to manhood, little girls to belles.
Style, that with pride each empty bosom swells,
Puffs boys to manhood, little girls to belles.
The waltz was a novelty in those days, and “Salmagundi” “views with alarm” its introduction into the social life of the town:
Scarce from the nursery freed, our gentle fairAre yielded to the dancing-master’s care;And, ere the head one mite of sense can gain,Are introduced ’mid folly’s frippery train.A stranger’s grasp no longer gives alarms,Our fair surrender to their very arms,And in the insidious waltz will swim and twine,And whirl and languish tenderly divine!O, how I hate this loving, hugging dance;This imp of Germany brought up in France!* * * * *Let France its whim, its sparkling wit supply,The easy grace that captivates the eye;But curse their waltz,—their loose, lascivious artsThat smooth our manners to corrupt our hearts!
Scarce from the nursery freed, our gentle fairAre yielded to the dancing-master’s care;And, ere the head one mite of sense can gain,Are introduced ’mid folly’s frippery train.A stranger’s grasp no longer gives alarms,Our fair surrender to their very arms,And in the insidious waltz will swim and twine,And whirl and languish tenderly divine!O, how I hate this loving, hugging dance;This imp of Germany brought up in France!* * * * *Let France its whim, its sparkling wit supply,The easy grace that captivates the eye;But curse their waltz,—their loose, lascivious artsThat smooth our manners to corrupt our hearts!
Scarce from the nursery freed, our gentle fairAre yielded to the dancing-master’s care;And, ere the head one mite of sense can gain,Are introduced ’mid folly’s frippery train.A stranger’s grasp no longer gives alarms,Our fair surrender to their very arms,And in the insidious waltz will swim and twine,And whirl and languish tenderly divine!O, how I hate this loving, hugging dance;This imp of Germany brought up in France!
Scarce from the nursery freed, our gentle fair
Are yielded to the dancing-master’s care;
And, ere the head one mite of sense can gain,
Are introduced ’mid folly’s frippery train.
A stranger’s grasp no longer gives alarms,
Our fair surrender to their very arms,
And in the insidious waltz will swim and twine,
And whirl and languish tenderly divine!
O, how I hate this loving, hugging dance;
This imp of Germany brought up in France!
* * * * *
Let France its whim, its sparkling wit supply,The easy grace that captivates the eye;But curse their waltz,—their loose, lascivious artsThat smooth our manners to corrupt our hearts!
Let France its whim, its sparkling wit supply,
The easy grace that captivates the eye;
But curse their waltz,—their loose, lascivious arts
That smooth our manners to corrupt our hearts!
In the novel and play of the time “Salmagundi” found still more alarming evidences of a decline in morals and manners:
Where now those books, from which in days of yoreOur mothers gained their literary store?Alas! stiff-skirted Grandison gives placeTo novels of a new and rakish race;And honest Bunyan’s pious, dreaming lore,To the lascivious rhapsodies of Moore.And, last of all, behold the mimic stageIts morals lend to polish off the age,With flimsy farce, a comedy miscall’d,Garnished with vulgar cant, and proverbs bald,With puns most puny, and a plenteous storeOf smutty jokes, to catch a gallery roar.Or see, more fatal, graced with every artTo charm and captivate the female heart,The false, “the gallant, gay Lothario” smiles,And loudly boasts his base seductive wiles—In glowing colors paints Calista’s wrongs,And with voluptuous scenes the tale prolongs.
Where now those books, from which in days of yoreOur mothers gained their literary store?Alas! stiff-skirted Grandison gives placeTo novels of a new and rakish race;And honest Bunyan’s pious, dreaming lore,To the lascivious rhapsodies of Moore.And, last of all, behold the mimic stageIts morals lend to polish off the age,With flimsy farce, a comedy miscall’d,Garnished with vulgar cant, and proverbs bald,With puns most puny, and a plenteous storeOf smutty jokes, to catch a gallery roar.Or see, more fatal, graced with every artTo charm and captivate the female heart,The false, “the gallant, gay Lothario” smiles,And loudly boasts his base seductive wiles—In glowing colors paints Calista’s wrongs,And with voluptuous scenes the tale prolongs.
Where now those books, from which in days of yoreOur mothers gained their literary store?Alas! stiff-skirted Grandison gives placeTo novels of a new and rakish race;And honest Bunyan’s pious, dreaming lore,To the lascivious rhapsodies of Moore.And, last of all, behold the mimic stageIts morals lend to polish off the age,With flimsy farce, a comedy miscall’d,Garnished with vulgar cant, and proverbs bald,With puns most puny, and a plenteous storeOf smutty jokes, to catch a gallery roar.Or see, more fatal, graced with every artTo charm and captivate the female heart,The false, “the gallant, gay Lothario” smiles,And loudly boasts his base seductive wiles—In glowing colors paints Calista’s wrongs,And with voluptuous scenes the tale prolongs.
Where now those books, from which in days of yore
Our mothers gained their literary store?
Alas! stiff-skirted Grandison gives place
To novels of a new and rakish race;
And honest Bunyan’s pious, dreaming lore,
To the lascivious rhapsodies of Moore.
And, last of all, behold the mimic stage
Its morals lend to polish off the age,
With flimsy farce, a comedy miscall’d,
Garnished with vulgar cant, and proverbs bald,
With puns most puny, and a plenteous store
Of smutty jokes, to catch a gallery roar.
Or see, more fatal, graced with every art
To charm and captivate the female heart,
The false, “the gallant, gay Lothario” smiles,
And loudly boasts his base seductive wiles—
In glowing colors paints Calista’s wrongs,
And with voluptuous scenes the tale prolongs.
The stage of social development at which the town had arrived is indicated by the words “female heart.” Its old-fashioned virtue, assailed by “Lalla Rookh” and “The Penitents,” had, fortunately, no premonitions that its infancy in the dramatization of vice was to pass into the full and voluptuous maturity of these later days of the play of passion without a shred to its back.
“Salmagundi” had made the town smile, but “A History of New York” was so broad in its mock-heroic treatmentof the local forefathers that it gave grievous offence to those members of the early Dutch families who lacked the sense of humor. An old gentleman who died twenty years ago once said to the writer of these lines, with perfect gravity, that Mr. Irving once confessed to him that the history was not entirely accurate! It appeared just before Christmas in 1809, preceded by cunningly devised hints and intimations in the form of letters, asking for information about a certain old gentleman who bore the name of Knickerbocker, who was last seen resting himself near Kingsbridge by the passengers in the Albany stage. He had a small bundle tied in a red bandana handkerchief in his hands, and appeared to be very much fatigued. Ten days passed without news of the whereabouts of this weary old gentleman,when it was announced that a book in his handwriting had been discovered in his room and would be disposed of to pay the arrears of his board and lodging!
The town became immensely interested, and when the History appeared it was eagerly read, laughed over, and denounced. Never was a book more cleverly announced even in this day, when advertising has become an art based on a deep study of the psychology of the crowd and the effect on the human mind of rhythmical recurrence, at short intervals, of skilfully phrased testimonials from eminent persons to the superiority of certain articles without which it is impossible to live. There were eighty thousand people in New York, and the society folk who constituted the “town” in the technical senseof the word were a comparatively small and homogeneous group, many of whom were of Dutch descent and bore names long honored in the city and now inscribed on the signs on the corners of the streets. The History, originally projected as a satire on a solemn and heavy-handed “Picture of New York” which had recently appeared, had widened its scope, and, like “The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews,” which started out to be a travesty on Richardson’s “Pamela,” took on the dimensions of an original contribution to literature. The dedication “To the New York Historical Society” struck the key-note of its burlesque gravity of manner and its audacious and rollicking fun. Its appearance was the signal for a blaze of wrath accompanied by a peal of laughter fromNew York to Albany. Mrs. Hoffman wrote to Irving, referring to one of his friends who was a social leader: “Your good friend, the old lady, came home in a great stew this evening. Such a scandalous story had got about town—a book had come out called a ‘History of New York’; nothing but a satire and ridicule of the old Dutch people—and they said you was the author; but from this foul slander, I’ll venture to say, she has defended you. She was quite in a heat about it.”
Ten years later, when its obvious burlesque intention ought to have filtered into the most solemn-minded, it was described by an eminent citizen of Dutch descent as “a coarse caricature.” Its humor was not lost, however, by a host of people in the town and elsewhere. “If it is true, as Sterne says,” wrote acorrespondent in a Baltimore newspaper, “that a man draws a nail out of his coffin every time he laughs, after reading Irving’s book your coffin will fall to pieces.” Walter Scott wrote to Irving’s friend Henry Brevoort: “Looking at the simple and obvious meaning only, I have never read anything so closely resembling the style of Dean Swift as the annals of Diedrich Knickerbocker. I have employed these few evenings in reading them aloud to Mrs. S. and two ladies who are our guests, and our sides have been absolutely sore with laughing.”
This audacious burlesque of the early history of the city and of its men of local fame and Dutch descent was the initial volume in American literature, the first book of what used to be calledbelles-lettrespublished in this country,the first piece of American writing of literary quality which caught the attention of Europe. It also created the Knickerbocker Legend, and gave the earliest group of writers in New York a descriptive name. Diedrich Knickerbocker has long been the impersonation of old New York, and, with Rip Van Winkle and Brom Bones, forms the central group in our New World mythology; and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” “Rip Van Winkle,” and the old-fashioned gentleman who was last seen on the Albany Post Road constitute our chief group of legendary characters and are all the creations of Irving’s imagination. While descriptions of the scenery and peoples of the New World had been written south of Manhattan Island and theological treatises abounded in New England, it was significantof the metropolitan spirit of New York that its earliest writers, who were also the earliest writers of literary spirit and purpose in the country, were men of humor and urbanity, and on easy terms with life.
The old-fashioned gentleman
* * * * *
Celebrated in the ‘Salmagundi’ papers as Cockloft Hall
Twoyears after the publication of “A History of New York,” Irving was living at No. 16 Broadway, near Bowling Green, with his friend Henry Brevoort. He had made various journeys to Albany and Washington by the tedious methods of travel in use at the time, and his letters showed conditions in political life which differed from those prevailing to-day chiefly in being more sordid and unscrupulous. The coterie who were to become known as theKnickerbocker group had become a little less boisterous in their convivialities, but not less persuaded that literature and jovial good-fellowship throve well together. They were often at the Hall on the Passaic or at the home of Captain Phillips in the Highlands of the Hudson, where spacious mansions and large estates had multiplied; and there were houses in town, like Mrs. Renwick’s, where these gay young men were at ease.
On the 25th of May, 1815, Irving sailed for Liverpool, and did not set foot on Manhattan Island again until 1832. He had given New York the Knickerbocker tradition, made the first important contribution tobelles-lettresin this country, and conferred on the metropolis the distinction of being the birthplace of American literature.
Between the publication of “Salmagundi” in 1807 and Irving’s return from Europe in 1832, the group of young men who belonged to his coterie and who formed the Knickerbocker group had their golden age of easy conditions so far as absence of competition was concerned. Long afterward Irving said to George William Curtis: “You young literary fellows to-day have a harder time than we old fellows had. You trip over each other’s heels; there are so many of you. We had it all our own way. But the account is square, for you can make as much by a lecture as we made by a book.” The “town” lasted well on into the Thirties, but it was no longer the undisturbed provincial city. Cooper, Bryant, Willis, and Poe had become residents, and there was a further progression toward cosmopolitanism.Moreover, the city was fast outgrowing its old-time metes and bounds, and complaints about the distances between sections and lamentations for the passing of “the good old times” began to be heard. While Irving was industriously transcribing the half-forgotten background of ripe landscape and ancient custom in the Old World and winning a reputation of the most enviable kind, the rollicking friends who had been young together were passing into maturity and making the most of the morning hours of reputation and position.
No more interesting face was seen in the streets of New York in the days of Irving’s long expatriation than that of James Kirke Paulding. The regular and clear-cut features, the smiling but penetrating eyes, the compact, well-poisedhead with its mass of hair worn with the picturesque carelessness of nature, gave him a look of distinction. He was a very companionable man, and there was no suggestion of the precision and preoccupation of the man of affairs about Paulding; his convictions were deep-set and never kept in the background if there was occasion for their expression; but, like all companionable men, he knew how to find common ground with a friend ample enough for the freest interchange of jest and idea. He was of colonial stock, as were all the men of his craft in New York. For many years before the Revolution the Pauldings had lived in Tarrytown, which is intimately associated with the Knickerbocker tradition; but that lovely shore of the Hudson was open to the ravages of both armies during the war,and the family removed to Dutchess County. This county lies north of Westchester, and both have fed New York with men of distinction. Dutchess claims to have been the mother of beautiful women as well, one of them of such surpassing loveliness that the Czar of Russia of that day pronounced her the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. The poet’s father was active in the American cause, and his cousin John was one of the captors of Major André. His boyhood was so ravaged by the uncertainties and hardships of war that he said later that he never wished to be young again.
He was in his nineteenth year when he came to New York, and, through his acquaintance with William Irving, met the group of young men who were making a business of pleasure and a recreationof literature. He and Washington Irving were soon fast friends, and the first number of “Salmagundi” was their joint production. Paulding, like Cooper, became involved later in controversies which gave sharp point to his pen, but in “Salmagundi” he shared with Irving the gaiety of spirit and urbanity of manner which made the keen satire of that quick-witted journal entertaining even to its victims. Duyckinck was of opinion that the papers in Oriental guise were from Paulding’s hand, and that he wrote many of the best descriptive passages; and characterized his style as stamped by feeling, observation, friendly truth, and genial sympathy. He was one of the first to state forcibly the American case in the long and at times acrimonious interchange of criticism between this country and England, and“The Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan” was so keen a piece of satire, but so free from malice, that it was reprinted in England. A later satire in the form of a parody on the “Lay of the Last Minstrel” made such stinging comment on the British raids on Chesapeake Bay as to be thought worthy of the attention of the “Quarterly Review,” an adept in the heavy-handed castigation in vogue at that time. A retort to the strictures of the “Quarterly Review” soon followed in pamphlet form, and raided English morals and manners with such effectiveness that it caught the attention of President Madison.
In 1816 Paulding traveled in Virginia and wrote one of the earliest of those local studies which record the interstate commerce of observation andcriticism for which this country supplies such abundant material. The spirited and frank retorts to the somewhat oppressive “condescension of foreigners” had made Paulding known to the country at large, but when “The Backwoodsman” appeared in 1818 its elaborate and very formal heroics, descriptive of the fortunes of an emigrant who made the perilous change from the Hudson to the frontier, found the same scanty measure of favor now generally extended to narrative poems. The poem enjoyed a distinction, however, at that time very rare: it was translated into French. Paulding’s friend and contemporary has left a somewhat enigmatic comment on this original American production: