David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [111]
“Colonel Wildfire…[is] an extremely racy representation of Western blood, a perfect non-pareil, half steamboat, half alligator, and etc.,” read an early newspaper review.
[He] possesses many original traits which never before have appeared on stage. The amusing extravagances and strange features of character which have grown up in the western states are perhaps unique in the world itself…. Of the play itself…we cannot speak too highly of it. Possessing all of the peculiar points, wit, sarcasm and brilliancy of Paulding, it shows him in a quite pleasing light—that of a successful delineator of native manners and indigenous character. There are materials enough in this wide country to construct a school of comedy peculiarly our own. Why not collect them? Mr. Paulding has set an example worthy of being followed up.15
A native of the state of New York, Paulding was a prolific and talented writer of mainly satirical plays and novels. His confidant, early collaborator, and brother-in-law was Washington Irving, another highly acclaimed early American writer and the author of such enduring tales as “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”16 Both men were associated with the Knickerbockers, a group of authors who, by 1832, ruled the literary community in New York City. Included in their ranks were James Fenimore Cooper, Fitz-Greene Halleck, and William Cullen Bryant. Another well-known Knickerbocker, and a possible source of Paulding’s interest in Crockett as a lead character, was Gulian Crommelin Verplanck. He was the New York congressman who had written a letter of support for Crockett in the wake of trumped-up stories about his behavior at a dinner with President John Quincy Adams, who by 1831 had been elected to Congress.17
Paulding had written The Lion of the West in 1830 for a competition sponsored by James Henry Hackett, a noted actor who put up a cash prize for a new and original American comedy. Hackett, considered one of the finest Shakespearean comedians of his day, coveted a leading role for himself and was delighted when he learned that his friend Paulding was gathering material based on the experiences of frontiersmen. Paulding wrote the portrait painter John Wesley Jarvis, asking him for some “sketches, short stories, and incidents of Kentucky or Tennessee manners, and especially some of their peculiar phrases and comparisons.” He also suggested that Jarvis “add or invent, a few ludicrous Scenes of Col. Crockett at Washington.”18
Not surprisingly, Paulding’s play was the one Hackett selected for production. Months before Lion premiered, word got out that Hackett’s portrayal of Nimrod (a synonym for hunter) Wildfire was a caricature of Crockett loosely based on episodes from his colorful life.19 Paulding and Hackett, most likely fearful of legal action, emphatically denied any connection between Wildfire and Crockett. On December 15, 1830, Crockett himself received a note from Paulding reassuring him that there was absolutely no intentional use of Crockett’s image and life experiences in the comedy. At first Crockett accepted Paulding’s denial as the truth. “I thank you…for your civility in assuring me that you had no reference to my peculiarities,” Crockett wrote to Paulding on December 22. “The frankness of your letter induces me to say a declaration from you to that effect was not necessary to convince me that you were incapable of wounding the feelings of a strainger [sic] and unlettered man who had never injured you.”20
However, when the play opened in New York in late 1831 and audiences saw Hackett in full frontier regalia and heard him utter his first words, the Crockett influence was