Writers of Knickerbocker New York

by Hamilton Wright Mabie

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 a correspondent 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 called belles-lettres published 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 significant of 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.

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Two years 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 the Knickerbocker 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 to belles-lettres in 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-poised head 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 recreation of 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.