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Updated: May 7, 2025
In looking over the bound volume of this magazine, I am amused at the grown-up style of thought assumed by myself, probably its very youngest contributor. I wrote a dissertation on "Fame," quoting from Pollok, Cowper, and Milton, and ending with Diedrich Knickerbocker's definition of immortal fame, "Half a page of dirty paper."
We know that since Gulliver there has been no piece of original humor produced in England equal to "Knickerbocker's New York"; that not in this century has any English writer equaled the wit and satire of the "Biglow Papers."
The far greater part, however, I have reason to flatter myself, receive my good-humored picturings in the same temper with which they were executed; and when I find, after a lapse of nearly forty years, this haphazard production of my youth still cherished among them; when I find its very name become a "household word," and used to give the home stamp to everything recommended for popular acceptation, such as Knickerbocker societies, Knickerbocker insurance companies, Knickerbocker steamboats, Knickerbocker omnibuses, Knickerbocker bread, and Knickerbocker ice; and when I find New Yorkers of Dutch descent priding themselves upon being "genuine Knickerbockers," I please myself with the persuasion that I have struck the right chord; that my dealings with the good old Dutch times, and the customs and usages derived from them, are n harmony with the feelings and humors of my townsmen; that I have opened a vein of pleasant associations and quaint characteristics peculiar to my native place, and which its inhabitants will not willingly suffer to pass away; and that, though other histories of New York may appear of higher claims to learned acceptation, and may take their dignified and appropriate rank in the family library, Knickerbocker's history will still be received with good-humored indulgence, and be thumbed and chuckled over by the family fireside.
"Knickerbocker's History of New York" is too farcical to take a high position on this score, though it undoubtedly had a beneficial effect in stirring up pride and interest in local antiquities; but "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" were valuable acquisitions so far as they went.
Knickerbocker's History having reached even to Albany, he received much flattering attention from its worthy burghers; some of whom, however, pointed out two or three very great errors he had fallen into, particularly that of suspending a lump of sugar over the Albany tea-tables, which they assured him had been discontinued for some years past.
You may live in Chicago until your hair whitens, and be a citizen and still prate of beans if Boston mothered you, and without rebuke. You may become a civic pillar in any other town but Knickerbocker's, and all the time publicly sneering at its buildings, comparing them with the architecture of Colonel Telfair's residence in Jackson, Miss., whence you hail, and you will not be set upon.
Knickerbocker's History was published just before Christmas, 1809, and made a merry Christmas for our grandfathers and grandmothers eighty years ago. The fun began before the book was published. In October the curiosity of the town of eighty thousand inhabitants was awakened by a series of skilful paragraphs in the Evening Post. The art of advertising was never more ingeniously illustrated. Mr.
IRVING, WASHINGTON. Born at New York City, April 3, 1783; went abroad for health, 1804; returned to America, 1806; published "Knickerbocker's History of New York," 1809; attaché of legation at Madrid, 1826-29; secretary of legation at London, 1829-32; minister to Spain, 1842-46; died at Sunnyside, near Tarrytown, New York, November 28, 1859.
"Well, it was before the old Knickerbocker's death that he I am telling you of first arrived in the city. He gave up medicine, and devoted himself to other studies; and, in the course of a few years, he found himself occupying the chairs of History and of Science at the University of New York.
There came other callers, both women and men; Percy Ambler, man of fashion and dilettante poet; and with him little Murray Symington, who wrote the literary chat for "Knickerbocker's Weekly", and was therefore a power to be propitiated.
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