“DISTRESSING.
Left his lodgings some time since, and has not since been heard of, a small elderly gentleman, dressed in an old black coat and cocked hat, by the name of Knickerbocker. As there are some reasons for believing he is not entirely in his right mind, and as great anxiety is entertained about him, any information concerning him, left either at the Columbian Hotel, Mulberry Street, or at the office of this paper, will be thankfully received.
P.S.--Printers of newspapers will be aiding the cause of humanity in giving an insertion to the above.”—Ad in the New York Evening Post, October 26, 1809, the first of several appearing at weekly intervals, written by Washington Irving
In January, I heard historian Elizabeth L. Bradley relate, on Leonard Lopate's WNYC-FM show, how Washington Irving achieved his first great literary success with the kind of faux-news that Jon Stewart would be delighted to pull off today. The 26-year-old Irving’s droll hoax about Diedrich Knickerbocker served as an appetizer to his History of New-York, a parody of an overly serious account that explained, but everything, about the city by Columbia University medical professor—and U.S. Senator—Samuel L. Mitchill. (You can listen to Ms. Bradley’s interview here.)
Irving persuaded a couple of friends to submit the notice to the Evening Post, then, every week for the next month, had another fake “item” about his down-at-the-heels gentleman, concluding with a book found in his lodgings and used to “pay off his bill, for board and lodging.” Said “book” was published on December 6, 1809—St. Nicholas Day, the same day when old-time Dutch New Yorkers celebrated “Sancte Claus.”
Line after line featured Irving’s send-up of pompous erudition. This description of Henry Hudson should have been a clue, if nothing else was: The great explorer was “a short, square, brawny old gentleman, with a double chin, a mastiff mouth and a broad copper nose, which was supposed in those days to have acquired its fiery hue from the constant neighborhood of his tobacco pipe.” My entire book, he was telling readers, is about blowing smoke.
Irving took the surname of his main character from a congressman (who eventually became a good friend, according to Andrew Burstein’s The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of Washington Irving). In turn, that surname became a kind of shorthand for all things Gotham.
As for the first name of the character: the young author couldn’t resist poking readers in the ribs with the phrase it sounded like: “Died rich.” That proved happily prophetic, as the book not only became the bestselling American work of fiction to that time but also unmistakably launched Irving on a career in which he became the first American author to live by his pen.
