Part 3

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.

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The last stages of the Knickerbocker age began when Fitz-Greene Halleck appeared on the scene. He was not to the manner born; he came from Guilford, Connecticut; but he felt the Knickerbocker spirit and shared its achievements. Born in one of the loveliest of the old New England villages, whose distinction was invariably expressed in a green or common, a Congregational spire, an academy, and rows of graceful elms, Halleck brought to New York, in 1811, a good school training and skill in bookkeeping gained in that forerunner of the modern department store, the country store. The laughter which greeted the appearance of the “Salmagundi” papers was a thing of the past, and the anger which met Diedrich Knickerbocker’s story of his ancestors had lost its heat; the merry youths who gathered at Cockloft Hall had blown the foam off the wine of life, though they had not lost their zest in the mere act of living; Irving was boarding on lower Broadway with Brevoort as a roommate, and there was plenty of good talk but very little work done.

Halleck made a very quiet entrance into the city which was later to honor him with one of the few statues commemorative of its Men of Letters. He was a born accountant, and during his long residence in New York he served two men in this capacity--Mr. Jacob Barker and Mr. John Jacob Astor. Mr. Astor, at his death in 1848, left him an annuity large enough in those days of moderate prices to enable him to retire to his native town and enjoy ease of condition and industrious leisure in a fine old colonial house which had some associations with Shelley’s adventurous grandfather.

Halleck did not find his way into the Knickerbocker group at the start, but he early made acquaintance with Joseph Rodman Drake and the two became ardent friends. Drake was a young man of captivating personality; variously gifted and brilliant; a thoroughbred in his sense of honor and a certain gallant rectitude and courage; a man of charming fancy, who, at the age of five, was writing clever verse. By descent he was an American of the Americans, if we accept the dictum of Richard Grant White that to be an American one must have come of ancestors who arrived in this country before the War of the Revolution. Drake had an ancestor in the Plymouth Company, and his father held a colonelcy in Washington’s army. His mother was equally well-born in the true sense of the word. His childhood was overshadowed by the death of both his parents and the bitterness of poverty; but the boy was of a chivalrous spirit and faced hard conditions with a resolution which was an assurance of success. His active fancy opened a door of escape from these conditions, and he played many romantic parts in the drama of his bleak boyhood. He was an omnivorous reader, his memory let nothing escape, and despite his lack of opportunity he became exceptionally well informed. His facility in verse-writing, so early developed, grew with his years; and his endeavor to make a man of business of himself failed utterly.

Drake was eighteen and Halleck twenty-three when, on a sailing party in the bay, they met James De Kay, a young medical student. The day was genial, youth was at the prow and also at the helm, and Halleck remarked that “it would be heaven to lounge upon the rainbow and read Tom Campbell.” It requires some effort of the imagination to recall Campbell’s popularity at that time and to revive the state of mind which could see in him a possible relation with the rainbow; but in youth and fair weather all things tremble on the verge of poetry. Literature was still in the future for the ardent youths, but life was within easy reach, and especially the pleasant social life of a small city. In this same year Irving was beginning to look upon the quiet pleasures of New York with the jaundiced eye of a veteran man of the world upon whom the weight of twenty-nine years bore heavily. Writing of a certain vivacious young woman who played “the sparkler,” he said: “God defend me from such vivacity as hers in future--such smart speeches without meaning; such bubble-and-squeak nonsense. I’d as lieve stand by a frying-pan for an hour and listen to the cooking of apple fritters”; and he reports that when he was out of the house he did not stop running for a mile. He speaks irreverently of the “divinities and blossoms” of the hour, of “rascally little tea parties,” and protests that he is weary of the “tedious commonplaces of fashionable society.”

The two young poets, hidden in an obscurity which they found very pleasant, were probably in great awe of the brilliant young Knickerbocker who had dared to ridicule the town, and who, in the glory of his local fame, was eager for fresh fields and a wider horizon. They found very excellent company and much pleasant talk in the city, and they hunted the joys of youth together. Halleck described Drake at this time as “perhaps the handsomest man in New York--a face like an angel, a form like an Apollo.” Music was one of the accomplishments of Drake, and he played the flute at a time when that instrument and the harp were the symbols of social cultivation. One of their hostesses was Mrs. Peter Stuyvesant, whose spacious house, not far from the square which bears her name, with its gardens and lawn stretching to the East River, was a centre of social activity. The city ended at Canal Street, and a visit in the vicinity of old St. Mark’s was like going to Tarrytown or Trenton in these swift-footed days. Mrs. Stuyvesant declared, when First Avenue was laid out and this earliest intrusion into the privacy of a great colonial estate made, that her heart was broken. A pear-tree which stood long at the corner of Third Avenue and Thirteenth Street was for many decades the only surviving relic of this hospitable home.

The country house of Mr. Henry Eckford was a kind of second home to the young poets, though its distance from the city was a test of their enjoyment of its hospitality. It stood in a pine grove on Love Lane where Twenty-first Street crosses Sixth Avenue! New York was surrounded by spacious country places, not only on the upper part of the island, but across the three rivers. Among these sylvan homes was that of the well-known Hunt family, on the Long Island shore almost opposite West Farms, to which Halleck and Drake made their way by stage and small boat, and where they often found delightful companionship over Sunday. On these occasions Halleck gave himself up to the pleasures of “female society,” but Drake went a-fishing in his old clothes. In the evening the two friends appeared in different rôles: Halleck told stories and recited verse, and Drake sang.

Drake had studied medicine and embarked in the business of selling drugs at one of the corners of Park Row, and there is a tradition that in this building, which was both a dwelling and a shop, the second series of satirical papers on the town, “The Croakers,” was conceived and brought forth. These lively satires, which took the town by storm, were in verse of varying degrees of wit and melody. They were clever skits on men and manners, many of them burlesques, and appeared first in the columns of the “Evening Post,” over the signature “Croakers,” adapted from “The Good-Natured Man.” This was in March, 1819, and thenceforth “Croakers” appeared at short intervals and speedily became the topic of the town. The poets and Coleman, the editor of the “Evening Post,” adroitly concealed the authorship of the poems, and great was the speculation on that subject. So great was the wincing and shrinking at “The Croakers,” that every person was on tenterhooks; “neither knavery nor folly has slept quietly since our first commencement,” wrote one of the two poets in a mood of pardonable elation. Poor Coleman was almost submerged by the flood of imitations called out by the brilliant success of the series. Conceived in the spirit of mischief, these facile and fetching rhymes have preserved the humors of the hour, and, with “Salmagundi,” are entertaining chapters in the history of the decade between 1819 and 1829.

General Wilson recalls a remark of Drake’s which explains the lightness and fun of these satirical and burlesque pieces. The young poet had just corrected the proof of some lines he had recently written, when he turned a glowing face to his collaborator and cried out: “Oh, Halleck, isn’t this happiness!” Halleck may be pardoned for writing to his sister: “We have tasted all the pleasures and many of the pains of literary fame and notoriety under the assumed name of ‘The Croakers’; we have had the consolation of seeing and hearing ourselves praised, puffed, eulogized, execrated, and threatened as much, I believe I can say with truth, as any writers since the days of Junius. The whole town has talked of nothing else for three weeks past, and every newspaper has done us the honour to mention us in some way, either of praise or censure, but all uniting in owning our talents and genius.”

The poets, meanwhile, were working individually as well as collectively. In 1819, while the town was still talking about “The Croakers,” “The Culprit Fay,” written in August, 1816, was gaining a wide reputation for Drake, and there were many who hailed him as the coming poet. It was a charming flight of fancy, delicately poised in mid-air, and kept aloft with that ease which is born of native gift and skill in versification. The story runs that Cooper and Halleck, in a warm discussion of the romantic associations of the Scotch lakes and streams and their rich contributions to poetry, declared that American rivers offered no such material to the poet. Drake not only ardently espoused the cause of the American rivers, but in three days’ time re-enforced his argument by writing “The Culprit Fay,” with the Highlands of the Hudson as a background, but bringing in impressions received on the shore of Long Island Sound; frankly confessing his departure from poetic realism in an ingeniously worded note: “The reader will find some of the inhabitants of salt water a little further up the Hudson than they usually travel, but not too far for the purposes of poetry.”

In May, 1819, Drake wrote his popular song, “The American Flag,” which appeared first in the columns of the “Evening Post,” with very warm commendation from the editor: “Sir Philip Sidney said, as Addison tells us, that he could never read the old ballad of ‘Chevy Chase’ without feeling his heart beat within him as at the sound of a trumpet. The following lines, which are to be ranked among the highest inspirations of the Muse, will suggest similar associations in the breast of the gallant American officer.” The praise was a little too ardent, but what the song lacked in poetic quality it made up in the ardor of its patriotism, and it has passed, through the school-books, into the minds of many generations of American boys, and has been proudly declaimed on many platforms. It ought to be remembered that Halleck wrote the closing lines:

Forever float that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom’s soil beneath our feet, And Freedom’s banner streaming o’er us.

One of the prominent preachers of the town at that time was the Rev. Dr. Samuel H. Cox, a Presbyterian of unadulterated Calvinistic views and the author of the well-known hymn beginning:

We are living, we are dwelling In a grand and awful time, In an age on ages telling, To be living is sublime.

The free poetic temperament of the two poets revolted at the rigid doctrines powerfully and dogmatically expounded by Dr. Cox, and they amused themselves by delivering sermons of a very different theology to a very small but highly appreciative audience of two intimate friends. Unfortunately, these productions, which would have made a highly original contribution to sermonic literature, have not been preserved.

The friendship of Halleck and Drake, compounded of love and laughter, of work and wit, was severed by the death of Drake in September, 1820. There is no more winning and unworldly chapter in the story of New York than the generous and loyal comradeship of these two young men, who, like Irving and Paulding, conspired against the dullness of the town and made it smile at its own follies. Neither poet had genius, but both had talent; and Drake, like Hamilton, belongs to the group of men of brilliancy and personal charm whose presence has given distinction to New York in every decade since it was founded.

Halleck had written “Fanny” in 1819, a satirical poem which dealt with contemporary manners and men with a freedom that stopped short of impertinence, but afforded much amusement to all save the solemn-minded. The poem passed through several editions and carried Halleck’s reputation to distant parts of the country. A visit in Europe gave the young poet themes like “Burns” and “Alnwick Castle” and “Marco Bozzaris,” which he treated with spirit and metrical effectiveness. Few boys have grown up in America since 1827 who have not heard of the Turk who dreamed in his guarded tent of the hour when Greece, “her knee in suppliance bent, should tremble at his power.” Perhaps no song written in this country has had wider currency than this spirited lyric, born at a time when the Greek struggle for independence appealed to the imagination of the world. In 1848, when his service in the office of John Jacob Astor was terminated by the death of that adventurous capitalist, with whom Irving had also had very pleasant relations, Halleck went back to Guilford and spent nineteen peaceful years in a house which bore the impress of colonial taste in its dignity and spaciousness. He had comfortable means and the leisure so dear to a man of literary taste and habit; but he never lost his love for the city which had given him such wealth of friendship. “I shall never cease to ‘hail,’ as the sailors say, from your good city of New York, of which a residence of more than fifty years made me a citizen,” he wrote to an admirer who wished to reproduce a view of his home in Guilford. “There I always considered myself at home, and elsewhere but a visitor. If, therefore, you wish to embellish my poem (‘Fanny’) with a view of my country-seat (it was literally mine every Sunday for years), let it be taken from the top of Weehawk Hill, overlooking New York, to whose scenes and associations the poem is almost exclusively devoted.”

Halleck died at Guilford, November 19, 1867, and has been commemorated by substantial memorials both there and in New York. A granite pillar was dedicated to his memory in his native town, in the presence of a great multitude, Bayard Taylor delivering the address and Dr. Holmes contributing one of his happy occasional poems. In May, 1877, a bronze statue of Halleck was unveiled in Central Park by the President of the United States. Bryant, the head of the guild of American poets, and William Allen Butler, the accomplished and versatile author of “Nothing to Wear,” delivered addresses, and a poem by Whittier was read.

Poets of far greater genius than Halleck have been far less adequately honored than he; for he was the poet of a half-century and of a city, not of an age and a nation. But he lived in a fortunate time; he was singularly happy in his associations; and he was a delightful companion, genial and witty, scornful and satirical only in dealing with impostors and pretenders.

* * * * *

That light-handed, urbane, and successful editor and poet, Nathaniel Parker Willis, long an active and entertaining figure in the New York of the Thirties and Forties, barely touches the Knickerbocker town of the Twenties. In the spring of 1829 he started the “American Monthly Magazine” in Boston--a periodical described at a later day by that well-known wit, “Tom” Appleton, as “a slim monthly, written chiefly by himself, but with the true magazine flavor.” Willis had been less than two years out of college and was without means or experience, and his enterprise had a fine air of audacity. Events showed that as a venture it was magnificent, but it was not war! At the end of two years the magazine was moved to New York and merged in “The Mirror,” a journal founded in 1823 by George P. Morris and Samuel Woodworth; was published every Saturday; and had a long and vigorous life under a succession of names. Woodworth, who wrote a song which was sung at supper-tables many years afterward--“The Old Oaken Bucket”--inspired, it is said, by a eulogy on spring water pronounced at a wine party at Mallory’s, a popular hotel of the time,--had withdrawn from “The Mirror” before Willis joined its editorial staff; but Willis and Morris remained partners and devoted friends to the end. They both became immensely popular--Willis through his versatility and sentiment, Morris through a series of songs which went to the hearts of a host of people: “Woodman, Spare that Tree,” “Near the Lake where droops the Lily,” and “My Mother’s Bible.” He was one of the earliest collators of literature for general reading, and his “Song Writers of America” and “The Prose and Poetry of America”--the latter edited in collaboration with Willis--were eminently useful compilations. He had the rare good luck to write a successful play founded on Revolutionary events, and a libretto for an opera; but his talent and fortune lay in his skill in giving popular sentiment expression in songs. General Wilson records, as the most impressive evidence of his popularity, that he could at any time exchange an unread song for a check for fifty dollars. Genial in manner and with an agreeable address, Morris was also a shrewd man of affairs.