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Updated: June 5, 2025
No reader can forget the description of the Thunder in "Roderick Random": the disorderly tyranny; the cruelty and dirt of officers and men; deck after deck, each with some new object of offence; the hospital, where the hammocks were huddled together with but fourteen inches space for each; the cockpit, far under water, where "in an intolerable stench" the spectacled steward kept the accounts of the different messes; and the canvas enclosure, six feet square, in which Morgan made flip and salmagundi, smoked his pipe, sang his Welsh songs, and swore his queer Welsh imprecations.
Not long after the discontinuance of "Salmagundi," Irving in connection with his brother Peter projected the work that was to make him famous. At first nothing more was intended than a satire upon the "Picture of New York," by Dr. Samuel Mitchell, just then published.
Into this society Irving entered with zest, flirting, dancing, tippling with other young swaggerers according to the mode. He went back nominally to his legal studies, but was really very little concerned with law or gospel. Of this kind of life, "Salmagundi," the first number of which, appeared in January, 1807, was the legitimate outcome.
As one of the contributors to Salmagundi, he exhibits the keenness of a flashing wit, while, in subsequent years, he represented New-York in Congress, when such an office was a distinction. Peter Irving, like his brother, united personal elegance with talents, and conducted the Morning Chronicle, amid the boisterous storms of early politics.
No reader can forget the description of the THUNDER in RODERICK RANDOM: the disorderly tyranny; the cruelty and dirt of officers and men; deck after deck, each with some new object of offence; the hospital, where the hammocks were huddled together with but fourteen inches space for each; the cockpit, far under water, where, "in an intolerable stench," the spectacled steward kept the accounts of the different messes; and the canvas enclosure, six feet square, in which Morgan made flip and salmagundi, smoked his pipe, sang his Welsh songs, and swore his queer Welsh imprecations.
I wanted to see my horse that was about to run for the Salmagundi Sweepstakes, and to tell my jockey that I'd give him fifteen thousand, instead of ten thousand, if he won for I had put quite a bunch down. I was a figure at the tracks in those days. I went into racing on my customary generous scale.
Paulding was the "Launcelot Langstaff" of the publication, and William Irving was "Pindar Cockloft" the poet. To the west of Golden Hill, Cortlandt Street extends to the river. In a house on that street close by Broadway, the three writers of Salmagundi spent much time at the home of the Fairlie sisters.
Perhaps, also, the town was secretly pleased to discover that it was sufficiently important to be worthy of such bright raillery and humorous reproof. Salmagundi was only a lively jeu d'esprit, and Irving was never proud of it. "I know," said Paulding, writing to him in later life, "you consider old Sal as a sort of saucy, flippant trollope, belonging to nobody, and not worth fathering."
Crossing Battery Park to State Street, at No. 17 is the tall Chesebrough building that has sprung up on the spot where William Irving, brother of Washington, lived, and where the Salmagundi wits gathered sometimes in the evening.
Like Lowell and Bryant, Irving was first devoted to the law, but his devotion was not of the quality that consumes. He soon strayed into pleasanter paths. In January, 1807, appeared the first number of Salmagundi, a humorous periodical which caused a great deal of curiosity as to the authors, whose witty articles appeared anonymously.
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