Volume 17 , Issue 39

Irving And Paulding (1899)

In The New York Times, dated 14 October 1899, Saturday, page 26, we find an article concerning "Irving and Paulding" When They Were Boys - Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow.

Found on Newspapers.com

It begins: One cannot visit Sleepy Hollow or explore the banks of the Pocantico as it seeks the Hudson without being conscious that Washington Irving stretched his scepter over these hills and valleys. From he gable of Synnyside to the belfry of the old Dutch Church, from "Tommy dean's" store to Carl's mill, his domain extended, and was still his inalienable territory, let who will pay the taxes!

The association which led him back to Tarrytown after years of wandering were formed in boyhood. The Pauldings, connected with his family by marriage, lived near a pleasant bay, just south of the present station, and it was while visiting them that he made an early acquaintance with the characters and scenes that engaged his pen in later years.

James Kirke Paulding, his senior by several years, was his guide and friend, if not philosopher; and it was not improbable that the people of the neighborhood, who had conjured for half a century by Geoffrey Crayon's name, must thank that engaging youngster for their titular saint.

It is hard for us to realize, looking at the cultivated "grounds," the "improved" residences, nd innumerable smooth lawns, what those two boys found as they rambled with guns or rods over the hills, or pushed their boat into the bays along the river shore. The Pocantico and its tributary streams then teemed with trout. The quail piped in every cornfield, and the grouse whirred from every invaded thicket. One little distant church folded the entire rural flock on Sabbath days. Revolutionary veterans, in the prime of life, fought their battles over at the tavern or the store. The market boat that sailed at stated intervals for New York, wind and weather permitting, tied up near the Paulding house, and the farm wagons lumbered down with their produce to the landing. A century had mad mighty changes.

Years afterward Washington Irving wrote:

To me the Hudson is full of storied associations, connected as it is with some of the happiest portions of my life. Each striking feature brings to mind some early adventure or enjoyment, some favorite companion who shared it with me, some fair object, perchance, of youthful admiration, who, like a star, may have beamed her allotted time and passed away."

There is something delightfully youthful and pastoral in that last touch. We catch a glimpse of other boyish pastimes than gunning or fishing or dreaming in a boat under the willows near Mr. Oliver Ferris's house - the Sunnyside of future years. The "beaming" objects of youthful admiration, met at the church or down by the millpond between services, or perhaps at the market-boat landing, gave, we cannot doubt, a peculiar zest to life, a particular delight to memory. The granddaughters of those girls of long ago must, some of them at least, be with us still. I wonder if there are preserved pleasant traditions of those innocent flirtations. I would like to know how the slower country beaux regarded the encroachments of those two city boys.

One of the resorts well known to all the fishermen on the taipan Zee was the Hafenje, or little harbor, a pleasant by that indented the shore to the north of the "yellow Rocks." In later days the old Dutch name became corrupted to "Hobbinger." It can hardly be doubted that the youthful companions wet their lines in its quiet water or beached their boat under the pines and hemlocks that bordered it. What islet of the Hafenje is a shallow cove between the railroad track and the dam behind which Gen. Watson Webb confined its tributary brook. John C. Fremont afterward bought that property and the pond and cove were locally known by his name. From an old sketch written by Spaulding and published in 1828 in one of the then fashionable annuals we get a glimpse of the local oddities, the characters, whose originality appealed so strongly to Irving, and of landmarks that had been obliterated. He describes "the little market town on the river, form whence the boats plied weekly to New York with produce," as "pestilent little place (in 1793) for running races, pitching quoits, and wresting for gin slings," but adds:

I must do it credit to say that it is now (1828) a very orderly town, sober and quiet, save when Parson Mathias, who calls himself a Son of Thunder, is praying in secret so as to be heard across the river. It so happened that of all the days in the year, this was the very day (one Tuesday in November) a rumor had got into the town that I myself, the veritable writer of this true story, had been poisoned by a dish of soughing teas. There was not a stroke of work done in the village that day. The shoemaker abandoned his awl, the hatter his boosting, the tailor his goose, and the forge of the blacksmith was cool from dawn till nightfall. Silent was the sonorous harmony of the big spinning wheel, silent of the village song, and silent the fiddle of Master Timothy Canty, who passed his livelong time in playing tuneful measures and catching bugs and butterflies."

The writer then proceeded to describe Tim Canty minutely:

Around his garret were disposed a number of unframed pictures, painted on glass, as in the olden time, representing the four seasons, the old King of Prussia, and Prince Ferdinand of Brunsnwick, ... the beautiful Constantia Phillips, and divers others, ... The whole village poured into the garret to gaze at these chefs d'oeuvres, and it is my confirmed opinion ... that neither the gallery of Florence, Dresden, nor the Louvre was ever visited by so many real amateurs.

It amy not be out of place to let the careful Buyckinck supply the grain of salt with which he warns us that Paulding should be enjoyed:

"In almost all the writings of Paulding there is occasionally infused a dash of his peculiar vein of humorous satire and keen, sarcastic irony. ... It is sometime somewhat difficult to decide when he is jesting and when he is in earnest. This is on the whole a great disadvantage in an age when irony is seldom resorted to."

As written in 1899 article, with this timely caution posted in the path of literature, wombats be dull indeed if we do not suspect that perhaps the voice of the Rev. Mathias did not reach altogether across the river - let us say half way over - or that the wrestling for gin slings was overestimated. But must we give up Tim Canty bodily? That would balmiest as hard as to admit that Ichabod Crane had no actual prototype.

There were references in the story of "Cobus Perks," from which the foregoing quotations were made, that had a convincing ring of truth about them. Perks was described as living on his farm "on the banks of the Sawmill River, where it winds close to the brow of the Raven Rock, an enormous precipice jutting out of the side of the famous Buttermilk Hill, of which the reader had doubtless often heard." The fact that the raven Rock, Buttermilk Hill, and the family of Yerks still occupied their assigned positions, was to be taken as an evidence of good faith and proved that Pauling's acquaintance with the vicinity was intimate.

The reference to "the old grave by the crossroads," which Cobus dreaded to pass at night, would probably have been recognized when it was written as an accurate bit of local color, and the repeated mention of the spot where John Ryer was hanged for shooting Sheriff Smith carried conviction. It was doubtful if those landmarks could be identified today , or even "the bridge at old Mangham's" where the black dog jumped into Yerks's wagon, but there's little doubt that under the guidance of his lively associate young Irving became familiar with them all.

The article goes on to report: We may suppose that the seed which was to come of fruition in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" was planted in those youthful days and germinated during twenty years' interval. The vivid impressions made by new and picturesque surroundings upon the impressionable mind of the lad of fifteen years of age were destined to affect the life and the fame of the American author in whose work perhaps more than in that of any other there is evidence of permanency. By his own confession Irving was but an indifferent sportsman. his nephew tells us that he explored the recesses of Sleepy Hollow with a gun in 1798, but we know that the best spoils of those expeditions were not to be found in his gamebag.

Edgar Mayhew Bacon who wrote this article in 1899 wrote, "The old order changeth. Sleepy Hollow, with its quiet mill woods and drowsy farms, has well-nigh disappeared. Carl's Mill is a ruin. The hand of the landscape gardener has transformed the old, quaint localities; but long after the last landmark is gone, and when even Mr. Rockefeller's legal disputes with the tax assessors are finally settled, the world will hold in pleasant remembrance the two boys who tramped the hills and fished the river and learned the legends of the country folk, and found in the country lasses "fair objects of youthful admiration" a century ago."
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