books, and it is creditable to Coleman’s taste that Wolfe’s “Burial
of Sir John Moore” and Byron’s stanzas on Waterloo were reprinted
immediately after their first publication. He received vast quantities
of indifferent American verse, signed with assumed names--“Mercutio,”
“Sedley,” “Puck,” and “Paridel”--together with some respectable nature
poetry by “Matthew Bramble.” In 1820–21 there were contributions from
John Pierpont, the author of “Airs of Palestine,” and Samuel Woodworth
and George P. Morris, two minor Knickerbockers whose names are kept
alive by “The Old Oaken Bucket” and “Woodman, Spare That Tree.” We may
be sure that keen young men like Halleck and Drake kept their eyes
upon this poetical corner of the _Evening Post_, and indeed, Halleck
appeared in it as early as the fall of 1818. He had come to town seven
years previous, had taken a place in the counting room of Jacob Barker,
a leading banker and merchant, had become intimate with Drake and
attended his wedding, and had written many and published one or two
songs. He frequently revisited his boyhood home at Guilford, Conn.,
and during a passage up the Sound one fine autumn evening he mentally
composed the stanzas entitled “Twilight.” Immediately upon his return
to New York he sent the verses anonymously to the _Evening Post_; and
though Coleman was exceedingly fastidious in his literary tastes, he
gave the lines to the printer after a single reading. This was one of
the first two poems which Halleck placed in his collected writings.
On a crisp March evening the next year readers who opened the _Evening
Post_ at their tea-table saw in a prominent position among the few news
items the following acknowledgement:
Lines addressed to “Ennui” by “Croaker” are received, and shall
have a place tomorrow. They are the production of genius and taste.
A personal acquaintance with the author would be gratifying to the
editor.
The next day, March 10, the position of honor was given up to the
poem. “We have received two more poetic crackers of merit from our
unknown correspondent, ‘Croaker,’” wrote Coleman, “which shall appear,
all in good time. But we must husband them. His promise to furnish us
with a few more similar trifles, though he tells us we must expect an
occasional touch at ourselves or party, is received with a welcome
and a smile.” And on March 11, Croaker’s lines, “On Presenting the
Freedom of the City to a Great General”--Jackson had just received that
honor--were accompanied with another appeal:
Is it not possible that we can have a personal and confidential
interview with our friend “Croaker,” at some time and place he will
name? If he declines, will he inform me how he may be addressed by
letter? In the meantime, whatever may happen (he, at least, will,
before long, understand me), I expect from him discretion.
Succeeding issues showed that the connection between Croaker and the
_Evening Post_ had become fixed and that the city was in for whole
series of skits on men, manners, and events. On March 12 was printed
the poem called “The Secret Mine Sprung at a Late Supper,” dealing with
a recent political episode; next day it was followed by verses, “To
Mr. Potter, the Ventriloquist,” then a popular performer; on the 15th
there appeared “To Mr. Simpson,” addressed to the manager of the city’s
chief theater; and on the 16th two poems were printed at once.
Most of the Knickerbocker art was imitative, and the Croaker poems were
in a vein which had been much exploited in England. “Peter Pindar,”
George Colman the younger, whose humorous poems entitled “Broad Grins”
had run through edition after edition, Tom Moore, and those kings of
parody, Horatio and James Smith, were the models whom Croaker and Co.
consciously or unconsciously followed. The moment was a happy one for
such bold and witty thrusts. Had they appeared when party feeling was
running high before or during the war, they would have given mortal
offense; but the tolerance accompanying the political era of good
feeling robbed them of any sting. From Coleman’s efforts to arrange an
interview with the authors, we may surmise that he feared some other
editor would share the prize, and that he had suggestions for further
squibs. His literary discernment was never better evinced than by his
enthusiastic reception of the first Croaker contribution. A dull editor
would have passed over the lines to ennui--which were only a facile
expression of weariness with the new books by Lady Morgan and Mordecai
M. Noah, the Edinburgh _Review_, Gen. Jackson’s reception, Clinton’s
political prospects, and the Erie Canal plans--without perceiving their
unusual qualities; a careless editor would have printed them without
asking for more. Coleman saw the possibility of indefinitely extending
the satires.
[Illustration: WILLIAM COLEMAN
Editor-in-Chief 1801–1829.]
The origin of the poems had been purely casual. Halleck and Drake, the
former now a prosperous and trusted aid of old Jacob Barker’s, the
latter a full-fledged physician recently returned from Europe, happened
in their romantic attachment to spend a leisurely Sunday morning with
a mutual acquaintance. As a diversion, Drake wrote several stanzas
upon ennui, and Halleck capped them. They decided to send them to
Coleman, and, if he would not publish them, to Mordecai N. Noah,
the Jewish journalist who had recently become editor of the Democratic
_National Advocate_. Drake, returning to his home, also sent Coleman
the two additional “crackers” which he acknowledged. The name “Croaker”
then carried as distinct a meaning as would Dick Deadeye or Sherlock
Holmes to-day, being that of the confirmed old grumbler in Goldsmith’s
“Good-Natured Man.” Coleman’s request for a meeting was granted by the
poets, who, as Halleck told his biographer, James Grant Wilson, one
evening knocked at the editor’s door on Hudson Street:
They were ushered into the parlor, the editor soon entered, the
young poets expressed a desire for a few minutes’ strictly private
conversation with him, and the door being closed and locked, Dr.
Drake said--“I am Croaker, and this gentleman, sir, is Croaker,
Jr.” Coleman stared at the young men with indescribable and
unaffected astonishment,--at length exclaiming: “My God, I had
no idea that we had such talents in America!” Halleck, with his
characteristic modesty, was disposed to give Drake all the credit;
but as it chanced that Coleman alluded in particularly glowing
terms to one of the Croakers that was wholly his, he was forced
to be silent, and the delighted editor continued in a strain of
compliment and eulogy that put them both to the blush. Before
taking their leave, the poets bound Coleman over to the most
profound secrecy, and arranged a plan of sending him the MS., and
of receiving the proofs, in a manner that would avoid the least
possibility of the secret of their connection with the _Evening
Post_ being discovered. The poems were copied from the originals
by Langstaff [an apothecary friend], that their handwriting should
not divulge the secret, and were either sent through the mails, or
taken to the _Evening Post_ office by Benjamin R. Winthrop.
The poems now followed in quick succession. On March 17 there was a sly
skit upon the surgeon-general, Samuel Mitchill, the best-known--and
most self-important--physician and scientist in the city, and a man
noted in the history of Columbia College; the next day an address to
John Minshull, a prominent merchant; on March 19 a poem of general
theme, “The Man Who Frets”; on March 20 and 25, verses upon Manager
Simpson of the Park Theater again; and on March 23 lines “To John
Lang, Esq.,” the sturdy old editor of the _Gazette_. An apostrophe
“To Domestic Peace” and “A Lament for Great Ones Departed” also
appeared in March, as did two complimentary epistles in verse to the
authors, selected by Coleman from “the multitude of imitators that the
popularity of Croaker has produced.” One writer spoke of Croaker and
Co. as “the wits of the day and the pride of the age,” while the other
credited them with making “all Gotham at thy dashes stare.” There was a
pause early in April while Drake was out of town, and Coleman confessed
that “on account of the public, we begin to be a little impatient.” But
the series recommenced on April 8, and by May 1, when a poem to William
Cobbett, the eminent English journalist, then sojourning on Long
Island, appeared, twenty-one had been printed. One Croaker contribution
had meanwhile come out in Noah’s _National Advocate_. After another
pause, on May 29 the _Evening Post_ published the gem of the whole
collection, Drake’s “The American Flag,” with the final quatrain
written by Halleck. Coleman prefaced this famous patriotic lyric with
the remark that it was one of those poems which, as Sir Philip Sidney
said of the old ballad of Chevy Chase, stir the heart like a trumpet.
It might more truly be said that, with its blare of sound and pomp of
imagery, it stirs the bearer like a full brass band. Probably not even
Coleman realized how many generations of schoolboys would declaim:
When freedom from her mountain height,
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there!
The success of the “Salmagundi Papers” did not compare in immediacy or
extent with that of the Croaker poems. Copies of the _Evening Post_,
which now had 2,000 subscribers, passed from hand to hand. In homes,
bookstores, coffee-houses, taverns, and on the street corners every
one, as Halleck wrote his sister on April 1, was soon discussing the
skits. “We have had the pleasure of seeing and of hearing ourselves
praised, puffed, eulogized, execrated, and threatened as much as any
writers since the days of Junius,” he informed her. “The whole town
has talked of nothing else for three weeks past, and every newspaper
has done us the honor to mention us in some way, either of praise or
censure, but all united in owning our talents and genius.” The two
young men, unused to seeing themselves in print, were tremendously
elated. Once upon receiving a proof of some stanzas from the _Evening
Post_, Drake laid his cheek down upon the lines and, with beaming eyes,
exclaimed to his fellow-poet: “O, Halleck, isn’t this happiness!” Most
of the Croaker series, which was virtually concluded in June, though
two poems now generally bracketed with them appeared in 1821, were too
much the product of joint labor to be assigned to one writer or the
other; the theme suggested itself, and both would elaborate it.
The newspapers received dozens of replies or imitations, Coleman
once showing Halleck a sheaf of fifteen that had come in during a
single morning. In spite of their local subjects, many of the poems
were reprinted all over the North, and as far south as Washington.
Woodworth, who himself wrote not a little on New York affairs,
successfully begged a contribution from Halleck for his magazine. It
may be mentioned that Coleman took some liberties with the series. To
one he prefixed a humorous letter, in another he inserted a couplet,
and in a third he altered the overworked name Chloe to Julia.
To modern readers the allusions to persons and events have lost their
wit, and the historical interest they have gained is only partial
compensation. We find little humor in the contretemps which occurred
when Gen. Jackson, entertained by the city leaders, and already a
Presidential possibility, threw the dinner into confusion by toasting
De Witt Clinton, who as a former Federalist was heartily hated by
many New York Democrats. Hence those numbers seem the freshest which
are most general in theme. The “Ode to Fortune” is better than the
lines “To Simon,” who was caterer at fashionable balls and weddings.
“The Man Who Frets” is more interesting than “To Capt. Seaman Weeks,”
who was leading an independent political movement against Tammany.
Only here and there are jests that we still appreciate, as the advice
to the theatrical manager to discharge his comedians and hire the
side-splitting legislators at Albany, and satire still comprehensible,
as the verses upon Trumbull’s florid Revolutionary paintings, which now
hang in the national Capitol:
Go on, great painter! dare be dull----
No longer after Nature dangle;
Call rectilinear beautiful;
Find grace and freedom in an angle;
Pour on the red, the green, the yellow,
“Paint till a horse may mire upon it,”
And while I’ve strength to write or bellow,
I’ll sound your praises in a sonnet.
But the skits are almost a catalogue of the worthies of the town.
The prominent merchants were represented by such names as Henry
Cruger, Nathaniel Prime, John K. Beekman, and John Jacob Astor. The
politicians--Henry Meigs, who voted for admitting Missouri, Clinton,
Morgan Lewis, Rufus King, and others--had more attention than any other
group. Croaker had much fun at the expense of the chief hotel-keepers:
Abraham Martling, owner of the Tammany Hall Hotel, and a political
figure of importance, William Niblo, whose restaurant at William and
Pine Streets was popular, and Cato Alexander, to whose tavern on the
postroad four miles out all the young bucks made summer excursions. The
stage folk received generous space, among them James W. Wallack and
Miss Catherine Lesugg, later Mrs. James Hackett, whose family names
were to figure so prominently in American theatrical history. Fifty
years later James Hackett himself contributed to the _Evening Post_ an
interesting chapter of reminiscences of Halleck, recalling how they had
first become friends when they were both admirers of the blooming Miss
Lesugg, then fresh from England, and how they maintained the friendship
till Halleck’s death. Even the editors--Coleman, Lang, Woodworth,
“whose _Chronicle_ died broken-hearted,” and Spooner of Brooklyn--were
not spared by Croaker.
Newspapers, however, usually establish a literary reputation not by
original poetry, but by literary criticism, and we may well stop to
examine the _Evening Post’s_ record in this field. It was slightly
handicapped by the fact that between 1801 and the appearance of
“The Spy” in 1821 there was virtually nothing worth criticizing.
Charles Brockden Brown had finished his career as a novelist before
the _Evening Post_ was fairly launched. Irving was silent after his
publication of the Knickerbocker “History” until the first part of
“The Sketch-Book” appeared in 1819. In verse almost nothing but
that marvelous piece of boyish inspiration, “Thanatopsis,” is now
remembered. Patriotic Americans of the day, like Coleman, made a
painful effort to believe that Allston’s “Sylphs of the Seasons,”
Paine’s “Juvenile Poems,” Mrs. Sigourney’s “Moral Pieces,” and
Pierpont’s “Airs of Palestine” were very nearly as good as the
literature coming from the pens of Byron, Coleridge, Scott, Wordsworth,
Keats, and Shelley; but the pretense was a ghastly mockery.
Most of the early book notices in the _Evening Post_ were of two useful
kinds: they were either an examination of political pamphlets for party
ends, or a gutting of new books of travel, biography, and history for
their news value. From the very commencement of the journal, many
columns of matter were furnished by the various pamphlets called forth
by Vice-President Burr’s attempted suppression of John Wood’s “History
of the Administration of John Adams”; for this internecine warfare
among Democrats delighted all Federalists. In the first days of 1803
pamphlets upon the annexation of Louisiana began to demand selection
and comment. Then came pamphlets upon the embargo, non-intercourse,
impressment, and the conduct of the British minister, Jackson. The
original publication of the very effective pamphlet by a “New England
Farmer” upon “Mr. Madison’s War” was in installments in the _Evening
Post_ during the summer of 1812. Gouverneur Morris inspired the
newspaper’s careful attention to the Erie Canal question; one evidence
of its interest in the subject was a series of articles in the spring
of 1807, reviewing the writings of “Agricola” upon it.
The books which were gutted were sometimes exceedingly interesting.
Thus in 1816 Coleman published copious extracts from James Simpson’s
“Visit to Flanders,” a vivid account of Waterloo and other battlefields
as they appeared the month after Napoleon’s defeat. In 1817 much was
made of Cadwallader Colden’s “Life of Fulton,” and two years later
of M. M. Noah’s entertaining “Travels in England, France, Spain, and
the Barbary States.” The extracts from O’Meara’s memoirs of Napoleon,
printed in 1822, led Coleman into an attack upon Napoleon’s jailer
at St. Helena, Sir Hudson Lowe; and when Col. Wm. L. Stone of the
_Commercial Advertiser_ came to Lowe’s defense, an animated controversy
followed.
It was part of Coleman’s editorial creed to beat the big drum for
American letters. Most of the Knickerbocker writers were themselves
really provincial in literary matters, keeping always a nervous and
envious eye upon England; for it was the period when, as Lowell puts
it, we thought Englishmen’s thought, and with English salt on her tail
our wild eagle was caught. This provincialism frequently expressed
itself in an insistence that America was, not America, but a bigger
England, and that the Hudson was not the Hudson, but a nobler Thames.
Coleman thought it his duty to encourage native literature, and the
amount of fifth-rate verse that was given patriotic praise in the
_Evening Post_ is dismaying.
The ode of Robert Treat Paine, jr., “Rule New England,” was commended
with a warmth that owed something to Coleman’s intimacy with the elder
Paine. Personal considerations also had their share in the flattering
notice of Winthrop Sargent’s “Boston” the next year. Coleman was one
of the few who has ever closed Peter Quince’s “Parnassian Shop” “with
impressions favorable to the young author.” In 1805 he was struck by
the “Democracy Unveiled” of Thomas Green Fessenden, a poetaster who
had got some notice by writing a successful book while imprisoned for
debt in Fleet Street, London. Francis Arden received favorable mention
for a translation of Ovid, while another very minor bard, Richard B.
Davis, who before his premature death had been a friend of Irving
and Paulding, was generously praised in 1807. The _Post_ published a
review of Pierpont’s “Airs of Palestine” by Henry Brevoort, Irving’s
bosom friend, and pronounced it indispensable to any American library.
It thought Halleck’s amusing satire on a New York merchant family in
society, “Fanny,” a better poem than Byron’s “Beppo,” whose verse
it imitated. Byron’s popularity at this time was such that when his
“Mazeppa” was published in England, a copy was hurried to Philadelphia
by the fast ship _Helen_, was placed in the printer’s hands at 2 p. m.,
and twenty-two hours later the volumes were issuing from the press
complete and being rushed to the bookstores.
But there were a few books that live. After Brockden Brown’s death in
1810, we find repeated mention of him, “amiable and beloved by all
his acquaintances,” by Coleman. “Wieland” the editor thought worthy
of his powers; and he remarked of “Ormond” that the reason why it
was formal and uninteresting was, as he personally knew, that it was
“written by stinted tasks of so many pages a day, and sent to the
printer without correction or revision, or even reading over, till it
came back to him in proof.” One of Coleman’s last contributions to the
_Evening Post_ was a short notice of a new set of Brown. He singled
out for remark the fact that the novelist seldom troubled to give
minute descriptions of sensible objects. “These he generally dispatches
with a few brief and bold touches, and bends his whole strength to
the speculative parts of the work, to follow out trains of reflection
and the analysis of feelings.” In 1806 the _Evening Post_ carried a
half dozen articles upon Noah Webster’s new octavo dictionary of the
English language, condemning it as to definitions, orthography, and
orthoepy, and quarreling violently with some of Webster’s grammatical
and etymological opinions. The reviewer accused Webster of grossly
misrepresenting the views of the English lexicographer Walker. Webster
replied in two long and forcible articles, compelling the reviewer to
admit some mistakes.
Irving’s career was closely followed by the _Post_. It defended his
Knickerbocker “History” against the embattled Dutch families, led
by Gulian C. Verplanck, who charged that he had defamed them. When
the first part of “The Sketch Book” appeared, a prompt review was
contributed by “a literary friend,” probably Brevoort or Paulding.
Warmly eulogistic, it is still discriminating. It commended Irving
for his “grace of style; the rich, warm tone of benevolent feeling;
the freely-flowing vein of hearty and happy humor, and the fine-eyed
spirit of observation, sustained by an enlightened understanding, and
regulated by a perception or fitness--a tact--wonderfully quick and
sure.” It declared “Rip Van Winkle” the masterpiece of the collection.
“For that comic spirit which is without any infusion of gall, which
delights in what is ludicrous rather than what is ridiculous (for its
laughter is not mixed with contempt), which seeks its gratification
in the eccentricities of a simple, unrefined state of society, rather
than in the vicious follies of artificial life; for the vividness and
truth, with which Rip’s character is drawn, and the state of society in
the village where he lived, is depicted; and for the graceful ease with
which it is told, the story of Rip Van Winkle has few competitors.”
Unfortunately, Coleman added a footnote in which he stated his personal
opinion that “Rip Van Winkle” lacked probability, and that the poetical
tale of “The Wife” was superior.
Six weeks later the second part of “The Sketch Book” was reviewed with
equal taste by apparently the same hand--that of some one who knew how
hard Irving was hit by the death of his fiancée, and his circumstances
abroad. At the beginning of 1823 Coleman himself wrote two long
articles in praise of the new “Bracebridge Hall,” declaring that he
had undertaken the task of rescuing it “from the rude and ill-natured
treatment of some of our American critics”; the _Literary Repository_
and two newspapers of Philadelphia and Baltimore having assailed it.
One reason for its ill-natured reception, he thought, was the high
charge made for the American edition, and another the kindly view it
took of British life and manners. He showed no little acquaintance with
Irving’s personal affairs, and probably had seen some of his letters
home. One epistle, written late in 1819, and telling of the essayist’s
acquaintanceships in London, had been copied out by Mrs. Hoffman,
mother of Irving’s dead sweetheart, for the _Evening Post_.
Those were the days in which Sydney Smith’s taunt, “Who reads an
American book?” struck home. In 1820 Coleman recorded with pride that
the rage for new publications was so great that “not a day passes but
the press is delivered of two or more”; though he referred to magazines
as well as books. On Sept. 4, 1823, he boasted that such value was
becoming attached to American literature in Great Britain that its
republication was profitable. A Scotch publisher had begun issuing
selections from Irving, Brooks, Percival, and others in a miscellany
circulated from Edinburgh. “Our sun has certainly arisen, and one day,
we predict, it will beam as bright as it does, or ever did, in the Old
World; and the Americans who may arise in future ages will not have to
blush on hearing their classics named with the greatest of antiquity.”