PAULDING, James Kirke (1778-1860), in his day a successful 'politician, and a writer of some distinction, was born in Dutchess county, New York, United States, on 22d August 1778, and, after a brief course of education at the village school, removed to New York city in 1800, to reside with his brother-in-law, William Irving, a brother of Washington Irving. In connexion with the latter Paulding began in 1807 a series of brief lightly humorous articles, which, under the title of “The Salmagundi Papers,” soon became popular, and continued to appear until 25th June 1808, when they terminated with the twentieth number. Six years later he published a political pamphlet, The United States and England, which attracted the notice of President Madison, who in 1814 appointed the author secretary to the Board of Navy Commissioners. Subsequently Paulding was for twelve years navy agent in New York city, and from 1837 to 1841 secretary of the navy, under President Van Buren. Although much of his literary work consisted of political contributions to the press, he yet found time to write a large number of essays, poems, and tales. His marriage in 1818, the death of his wife, and his own withdrawal from public life in 1841, with his death on 5th April 1860, comprise the chief remaining facts of his useful, honourable, and uneventful career....
From his father, who was an active revolutionary patriot, Paulding inherited strong anti-British sentiments, which colour much of his satire, but otherwise he was a just and genial critic, and a delicate and kindly humorist. Of a reserved disposition and hasty temper, with many prejudices, and of extreme political views, he was yet an eminently upright man; of an affectionate nature and a forgiving disposition; a hater of debt, lies, and shams; and an absolutely incorruptible official, who, in every relation of life, was inspired by a lofty, if sometimes mistaken, sense of honesty and honour. In literature he merits notice chiefly as a pioneer, and, though his place was never high, and will certainly not be permanent, he was among the first distinctively American as opposed to English writers, and protested more vigorously than any of his contemporaries against intellectual thraldom to the mother-country. As a prose writer he is chaste and elegant, with a fine negligence, which is sometimes the result of art, more frequently of haste; and, while not so elaborate as Irving, so diffuse as Cooper, or so frank as Neal, he is generally just, neat, fanciful, and realistically descriptive. Among his short stories perhaps the best are Dyspepsy and The Politician, among the long The Dutchman’s Fireside. As a poet he is gracefully commonplace,—a weak reflexion of Thomson, with a dash of the prairie and the backwoods. His longest and most ambitious poem is—or was, for it is now forgotten— The Baek-woodsman, which is ill-constructed and tedious, and the only lines of Paulding’s which survive in popular memory are the familiar—
“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers; where is the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked ?” which may be found in Koningsmarke.
The following is a list of his writings :— The Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan (1812); The Lay of the Scottish Fiddle; a Tale of Havre de Grace, supposed to be written by Walter Scott Esq. (1813), a good-natured parody on The Lay of the Last Minstrel written with the special intention of ridiculing certain American follies and exposing the excesses of the British in the Chesapeake; The United States and England OS14); Letters from the South (1817); The Backwoodsman; a Poem (1818); Salmagundi, second series (1810-20); A Sketch of Old England, by a New England Man (1822); Koningsmarke, the Long Finne (1823), a quiz on the romantic school of Scott; John Bull in America; or the New Munchausen (1824), a broad caricature of the early type of British traveller in America; The Merry Tales of the Three Wise Men of Gotham (1820); The New Mirror for Travellers (1828); The Tales of the Good Woman, by a Doubtful Gentleman,—otherwise James K. Paulding (1829); Chronicles of the City of Gotham, from the papers of a retired Common Councilman (1830); The Lion of the West; a Comedy (1831); The Dutchman's Fireside (1831); Westward Ho.' (1832); A Life of Washington (1835), ably and gracefully written; Slavery in the United States (1836); The Book of Saint Nicholas, a series of stories of the old Dutch settlers (1837); A Gift from Fairyland (1838); The Old Continental; or the Price of Liberty (1846); American Comedies, the joint production of himself and his son William J. Paulding (1847); and The Puritan and his Daughter (1849). The same son also published a posthumous volume by his father, entitled A Book of Vagaries, which is included in an edition of Paulding’s Select Works (4 vols., 1867-68), and a most unsatisfactory biography, mostly made up of long extracts from Paulding’s writings, called Literary Life of James K. Paulding (1867).
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