When he achieved literary fame, Washington Irving was hailed as the American Dickens. Irving’s work never achieved the popularity of The Great Man’s novels, but he was the first and best known writer in the new nation. Among his creations was the unforgettable Ichabod Crane, a gangly, doofy and hapless school teacher in Sleepy Hollow, NY, where I lived for a decade. In fact, Irving’s grave is in the Old Dutch Burying Ground, a three minute walk from my former house (the Headless Hessian is said to be buried there, too). WI loved the funny English and Dutch names then common to the Hudson Valley. One real such person was Preserved Fish, another a US Marine officer called Ichabod Crane. Determined Cock was a name Irving created, but it really should have been a moniker in life. The character of Crane, the gangly school teacher, was based on yet another man, an actual pedagog who lived in nearby Kinderhook, called Jesse Merwin.
© 2024 John Oliver
Substack is the home for great culture