Writers of Knickerbocker New York

by Hamilton Wright Mabie

In 1816 Paulding traveled in Virginia and wrote one of the earliest of those local studies which record the interstate commerce of observation and criticism 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:

Homer was well enough; but would he ever

Have written, think you, “The Backwoodsman”?

Never!

If these lines had fallen under the eye of Matthew Arnold we should have had another light-handed international amenity to contribute to the joy of both nations.

When Paulding tried to recall the atmosphere and tone of “Salmagundi” in 1819, it was soon evident that the “town” of the early Knickerbocker had merged into a larger community, and much of the wit went wide of the mark. Paulding, meanwhile, had entered public service and was living in Washington. In 1823 he published his first novel, “Koningsmarke,” a study of life among the Swedish settlers on the banks of the Delaware. But the satirical impulse was strong in him, and the title of his next book, “John Bull in America; or, the New Münchausen,” is sufficiently descriptive to make further comment unnecessary; while “The Merry Tales of the Three Wise Men of Gotham,” which appeared a year later, touched somewhat caustically the new social doctrine of Robert Dale Owen, the rising science of phrenology, and other matters of interest at the moment. His aptness for satire was braced in Paulding by a lively dislike for the heavy contemptuousness of manner of some Englishmen of the time, and the abundant material furnished by some of these candid friends led him again to enter the field with one of the keenest of his satires, “The Mirror for Travelers,” a burlesque guide-book and record of travel in this country, in a cleverly imitated British manner.

In this satiric view Paulding was a true child of the Knickerbocker spirit, and his next books, “Tales of the Good Woman” and “Chronicles of the City of Gotham,” purported to be translations of legends of early New York. A Mrs. Grant, who had written pleasantly of the old Dutch settlers, furnished material for “The Dutchman’s Fireside”; a story which so greatly pleased the readers of the day that it went promptly through six editions and was republished in England, France, and Holland. In Washington, as in New York, Paulding was a thoroughgoing Knickerbocker; but he had an eye for manners and great zest for the pleasures of hospitality, and his account of Virginia was followed, the year after the appearance of the Dutch novel, by “Westward Ho!”, a story that, moving with the southern flow of emigration, began in Virginia and was worked out in Kentucky. Paulding was charmed by the plantation life, the generous hospitality, and the winning Southern temperament, and in 1836, when the tide of feeling in the country was rising, wrote an uncompromising defence of slavery, an institution with which he was not unfamiliar in his own State, where it was not abolished until 1799. In 1837 Paulding entered the cabinet of a Knickerbocker President, Van Buren, as Secretary of the Navy.

On retiring from office, Paulding found a delightful home overlooking the Hudson, not far from Poughkeepsie, within sight of many of the localities endeared by early associations and ancient Dutch traditions. There he practised the arts of agriculture and of writing with growing content. He was as busy within doors as without, and his pen was driven as regularly as his plough. A story of the Revolutionary period, and, later, a novel laid partly in this country and partly in England, and an American comedy, “The Bucktails; or, The Americans in England,” were fruits of this well-ordered leisure. Five years later he gave this very comfortable picture of his manner of life:

“I smoke a little, read a little, write a little, ruminate a little, grumble a little, and sleep a great deal. I was once great at pulling up weeds, to which I have a mortal antipathy, especially bull’s-eyes, wild carrots, and toad-flax, alias butter-and-eggs. But my working days are almost over. I find that carrying seventy-five years on my shoulders is pretty nearly equal to the same number of pounds; and instead of labouring myself, I sit in the shade watching the labours of others, which I find quite sufficient exercise.”

Sitting pipe in mouth on his veranda overlooking the river, watching the harvesters and the haze on the Catskills on those autumn afternoons when Rip Van Winkle’s slumbers were deepest, the old man delighted to recall the golden Knickerbocker age before the “town” had been lost in the metropolis, to tell the brave story of the youth of the Knickerbocker group, to draw the portraits of the great men he had seen in Washington, to castigate John Bull with passionate eloquence whenever occasion arose, and to chant the elegy of age on the good old times of the patriots and demigods. A sturdy man, of deep convictions and passionate feelings, Paulding shared Irving’s sense of humor, high spirits, and gift for satire; but, while Irving saw the Old World with sympathetic eyes and reknit the severed ties between the young and the old country, Paulding remained a provincial in experience and feeling; loyal, prejudiced, partisan; a man of a city, but not a man of the world.