In this, the third in a four-part series on the history of the Hudson River and its role in shaping the American identity, we explore the place that an emerging community of writers had in defining the traits and personalities of what the world would later view as, ‘typically American’. This story is a complex one and involves the impact of Henry Hudson and his explorations of 400 years ago, the impact of Native American culture, the Dutch settlers and, later, English colonial control over the region, as well as the literary and artistic contributions that followed. They all add up to a picture of a period in early U.S. history that was complex and multi-layered, where civilization’s expansion exposed both the landscape and the people living in the Hudson Valley to radically new influences, as a new nation was being formed. Traveling the Hudson River nearly from end to end, the author concludes that the interaction of the river, the surrounding landscape and the long history of the region created our first cultural ‘melting pot’; fueled by the colorful and picturesque imagery made possible by the sum total of these influential factors. Fine Arts Magazine

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)

A New York State native, Cooper was vilified by early critics for his unrefined writing style, lack of cultivation and heavily romanticized portrayal of life on the frontier. Self-taught, in his prolific career he managed to capture the spirit and atmosphere of conflict in the rugged new country shared by Native American and Europeans, alike. In books like The Deerslayer, The Pioneers and The Last of the Mohicans, among others, he shaped a cast of players who were, at once, finely tuned to their natural surroundings and clever in acquiring the resources they needed to survive—what one critic of the day called, “The primal quality of robust manhood [that] all men understand.” (Edwin Whipple, 1886)

His stunning descriptions of the awe-inspiring settings that served as a backdrop for the action in his novels did much to idealize the American wilderness and attract attention to the vastness and allure of these uncharted lands. His avid and detailed narrative renderings of the verdant Hudson Valley countryside would do much to spark the imagination of the traveler and newly-minted American patriots as they sought to experience for themselves this apparent Eden-within-reach. For there, they might encounter the wily old woodsman, Natty Bumppo (Hawkeye), Chinggachgook , or the other literary characters in Cooper’s, Leatherstocking Tales that would, over time, ultimately shape Americans’ own perception of themselves:

“Near the centre of the State of New York lies an extensive district of country, whose surface is a succession of …mountains and valleys…The mountains are generally arable to the tops, although instances are not wanting, where the sides are jutting with rocks, that aid greatly in giving to the country that romantic and picturesque character which it so eminently possesses…The vales are narrow, rich and cultivated; with a stream uniformly winding through each. Beautiful and thriving villages are found interspersed along the margins of the small lakes, or situated at those points of streams which are favorable to manufacturing…Roads diverge in every direction…academies, and minor places of learning, meet the eye of the strangers…and places for the worship of God abound with that frequency which characterizes a moral and reflecting people…that flows from unfettered liberty of conscience.” -from, The Pioneers, J.F. Cooper, 1823, pg. 2-3

In 1898, literary critic, Thomas Higginson wrote, “If Cooper had succeeded in the painting of character to the same extent that he did in the painting of the phenomena of nature, he would have uttered the last word of our art.”

Washington Irving (1783-1859)

The namesake of national hero, George Washington, Irving was said to have met the man, himself, when he was six years old and never forgot the touch of the great general’s hand atop his head. Also a New York native, he traveled the world widely and was well-regarded for his writings during his lifetime. Sent by his family up the Hudson River to Tarrytown at age 15, ahead of a yellow fever outbreak, he discovered the quaint customs and fables of the Dutch living there. Sleepy Hollow and the Catskill mountain region would later be the setting for his short stories, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip van Winkle, published in 1819 under the title, The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Later, he would write, “[O]f all the scenery of the Hudson, the Kaatskill Mountains had the most witching effect on my boyish imagination”.

According to Sleepy Hollow story-teller, Jonathan Kruk, ”Irving framed out the character of Ichabod Crane, the newly-arrived Connecticut school teacher in The Legend as sophisticated, urbane and effete, yet clumsy; that is, a caricature of an ‘Englishman’. It is a local, Brom Bones, the prankster, who terrifies Crane as the visage of a headless horseman, pumpkin head held high in his hand. It is the ‘rollicking, roistering blade’, Bones, who assumes the traits of the adventuresome risk-taker (seeds of the American persona), to terrify the new-comer, who exhibits all the laughable traits of Old World Puritanism.”

These dispositional traits, bordering on parody, were not lost on the reader in the 1820s. Thus, according to Kruk, it was Irving, in the framework of the Dutch culture and the mythic traditions of story-telling in the Hudson Valley, who first fostered the concept of the American character, which was then disseminated throughout the world. “It was the immense popularity of Irving’s writings at the time that helped to spread the idea of what it meant to be an American,” he explains. Then too, it was Irving, himself, who described this place as, “[a] detached position…with the majestic Hudson rolling through it [and] has given them (the Catskills) a distinct character, and rendered them at all times a rallying point for romance and fable.”

“If the Hudson is to us something more than a mere waterway and convenient natural agency for ‘moving the crops to tide-water’; if the Catskills are something more than a good place to establish summer hotels, it is to Irving that the fact is due. If there is a touch of poetry, or romance, or human interest, about the background of New York, a mellow suggestion of myth and superstition, a legendary halo that soothes the sight tortured by the flaring, garish noon of our materialism, it is Irving who put it there.” -Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1883, in, The Nation, vol. 36, pg 292

Author’s Note: In another of a series of earlier works (1807-09), The History of New York– from the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch Dynasty, Irving adopts the pseudonym, Diedrich Knickerbocker and lampoons New York social life, history and politics. It was Irving who adopted the old Anglo-Saxon term Gotham, or ‘Goats-Town’, to describe New York and what he considered the supercilious affectations of its people at that time. The name, Knickerbockers is used, even today, to describe New York City dwellers and their favorite basketball team.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau and the Transcendentalists

The evolution of man’s worshipful relationship with nature in the New World, as portrayed in the paintings of the Hudson River School, did not occur immediately, nor was that idealized connection universally shared among the inhabitants of an emerging nation. For the earliest English settlers of Plymouth Plantation (1620), an Old Testament, Biblical view of their wilderness surroundings characterized it as ‘cursed’ land, ‘the environment of evil,’ a ‘kind of hell’ on earth. The Puritan settlers of New England believed they found themselves in such a ‘wilderness condition’ of continental proportions and it was their God-ordained destiny to transform the dismal American wilderness into an earthly paradise, governed according to the strict and unwavering Word of God.

Yet, for others (English settlers on the mid-Atlantic seaboard, the Dutch, Spanish and French engaged in other regions of the continent), this new land offered promises of wealth and power through the exploitation of the abundant lands and the natural resources they found there. Depending on how the indigenous inhabitants of the region were regarded at the moment, the Indians were either viewed as ‘noble savages’ or ‘Godless and dangerous’ obstructions to the European settlers’ ultimate, materialistic objectives. But, one thing was certain—the destruction of wilderness in all areas of the new colonial empire began immediately, as natural resources were rapidly stripped or appropriated for an expanding population; the native population inevitably being neutralized by displacement, European-originated disease and/or genocide.

As hard as it is to conceive by today’s standards, in the early 19th century there was growing concern among many about the impact of civilization on the pristine condition of the countryside in the wake of expanding industrial production. These early preservationists found a voice in Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and the Transcendentalists. Breaking from their orthodox, New England Calvinist roots, this small group of activists chose to see God’s presence symbolized in the woodlands and fields, flora and fauna, sun and sky that surround them. This very ‘modern’ view of religion was designed to call attention to the abject materialism of an emerging 19th century middle class and the rapidly changing face of the American landscape in response to urbanization and industrialization.

For Emerson, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) and others, God was manifest through nature as they urged closer contact with and respect for the elements of our natural surroundings. But, while Thoreau’s philosophy placed a greater emphasis on ‘lived experience’, self-reliance and the immediacy and directness of man’s relationship with nature, Emerson placed God in a more significant role in the triangulated paradigm involving man, the natural world and the divine. Pivotal to the newly-identified power of man in shaping and controlling his role in the natural world, was a speech, entitled, “The American Scholar’, given by Emerson to the Phi Beta Kappa Society in Cambridge, MA in 1837. In what Oliver Wendell Holmes called, ‘America’s Intellectual Declaration of Independence’, Emerson urged the audience to: “become a thinking man, adopting a fresh new voice rather than mundanely accept the opinion of others; to investigate and understand nature and to take action, or interact with the world in the name of change.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

New England-born, Bryant was considered America’s first authentic poet. Writing in the Romantic style of his English counterparts, Bryant spent most of his life living in New York, where he was the editor-in-chief of the New York Evening Post for nearly fifty years. During that time, he was a high-profile advocate for the creation of Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as workers’ rights. He was also an outspoken political activist, supporting such candidates as Abraham Lincoln for the presidency in 1860.

Through his poetry he embraced nature as a metaphor for truth and gained early notoriety for a work entitled, Thanatopsis (1813), or a meditation on death. In it, he draws a parallel between death and a return to nature’s embrace. Long an advocate for the Hudson River School of painting, he was a close friend of Thomas Cole, founder of the movement to represent the landscape of the Hudson Valley in its most pristine form. His call to, “Go forth, under the open sky, and list to Nature’s teachings,” in Thanatopsis, became a rallying cry for Thomas Cole and other painters who sought to convey the perfection and inspiration of the natural world through their work.

After Cole’s premature death in 1848, the bond of friendship with Bryant and inspirational message of his poetry for the naturalist movement of the day were captured in a painting by Asher Durand. Entitled, Kindred Spirits (1849), it shows Cole and Bryant standing side-by-side on a rocky prominence in the Catskills, known as The Clove, overlooking a densely-forested vista. (see left.  With permission, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)

Having produced only a handful of notable poems and even fewer truly famous works, Bryant stands as a giant in American literary tradition because of his half-century long role in the New York newspaper business and his fierce advocacy for natural preservation at a time in U.S. history and in a particular locale (Hudson River) where such themes were a central concern.

by Richard Friswell, Executive Editor

Part IV, the Hudson River Painters enter the cultural mix! Coming Soon