Introduction / Washington Irving Song

[WASHINGTON IRVING, spoken]
Gossip, whisperings, intimate details of scandal. And, when that well runs dry, invented rumors tricked out to start tongues wagging in the coffee houses of John Street.

Pah! Ah, I'm no longer a child! I'm Washington Irving, and the cycle of years has come round to 1809. Which means I'm twenty-six years old and have as yet written nothing. That is, nothing worthy to endure.

I'll no more of it! I've filled my last gossip column, and the space may gape empty tomorrow morning. A man can't go on forever manufacturing fiddle-faddle for the transient amusement of the witless.

Yet when I throw out a hint that I shall try my hand at something more ambitious, my friends gather round with a great wagging of craniums: "Now, Irving, don't go high-and-mighty. This is a pioneer country, with no literature, no traditions, nothing mellow enough to make an inspiring tipple for the generations. Content yourself," they say: "Here you are, a wise and witty young dandy. A man about town with a rising reputation for a saucy tongue and all the latest answers! Content yourself. You amuse folks over the breakfast table. Keep it up."

Well, my friends, why not make a tradition? A literature has to begin sometime. And a pioneer country can't remain pioneer forever. "Don't be heavy," they say. "Don't lose your following." But why shouldn't a book be both good and amusing? That's what the best of them arrived at, and I'll aim at it, too.

There's that history of Old Dutch New York I thought of writing. My Knickerbocker History. If it's funny enough it will be read. If it's good enough it will endure. And in all the history of the world there's never been such a gathering of pantalunatics as among those first fat Dutch settlers.

Of course, for the sake of popularity I'd be careful to keep the laughter innocent. There was a seamy side even to that isle of the blest, the old New Amsterdam. I'd have to gloss that over here and there—just here and there—or I'd offend a lot of tony descendants among our High Dutch aristocracy. And that, beyond question, would affect sales—and adversely. But I'll avoid that. I'll make it all enchanting romance and good clean fun!

(sung)
I'll sing of a golden age
In the history of New York
When the site of Trinity Parsonage
Was a pasturage for pork
When Wall Street was indeed a wall
And the Bowery was a farm
And the pipe you smoked, if you smoked at all
Was twice as long as your arm

(spoken)
Six hundred people in New York at that time, and now we're almost as big as Boston.

(sung)
I'll sing of an age forgot
Before the inflation came
When the island called Manhattan
Brought a sum embarrassing to name
Of the days before the Indian tribes
Had turned to wood or reservations
Before a wigwam suggested bribes
Or had other unsavory political connotations

(spoken)
No, I'll cut that out. No politics. I won't mention anything derogatory, municipal graft or anything. This book has to sell!

I begin to see it. Yes, I begin to see it. The Battery, circa 1647. Stone piers along the waterfront, windmills in the distance. Perhaps a ship at anchor behind the rows of houses with their corrugated roofs. And then dawn flushing up over ancient Brooklyn. Little Dutch maidens washing the steps, a trumpeter coming through...

[CORLEAR, spoken]
Oyez! Oyez! Can the city of New Amsterdam hear me? No news by land... no news by sea... absolutely no news whatsoever!