Washington Irving Society

Wednesday, September 17, 2025

BY TRACY HOFFMAN

When I teach Salmagundi, I always think about bringing a salmagundi salad to class, but then I decide anchovies probably aren’t the best idea. I wouldn’t want anyone to connect our Washington Irving class to a fishy smell.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, salmagundi consists of “chopped meat, anchovies, eggs, onions with oil and condiments.”* But when I’ve made my version of salmagundi, I tend to avoid any extra “chopped meat.” The anchovies are enough, but you can make it however you like. The idea is a mixed salad, and we all know how to throw together a salad we like.

My class has cruised through the most popular stories: “Rip Van Winkle,” “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” “The Devil and Tom Walker,” and the Bracebridge Christmas stories. I wanted to give students a fun, easy way to start the class, and to get everyone on the same page since a handful had already read Irving in previous classes.

With the basics down, this week we began the chronological sampling of Irving’s larger body of work, starting with the Mustapha letters from Salmagundi. The plan is to finish the semester with snippets from the five George Washington volumes. I only assigned students three of the Mustapha letters, but many also ventured into other articles, so I trust everybody got an overall feel for the twenty issues of Salmagundi.

With all that’s going on this Wednesday of 2025, I find myself trying to imagine Washington Irving’s world of 1807, more than a decade before he published “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Instead of continuing to deal with Ichabod Crane’s role as the chief pedagogue, my mind has drifted into the troubling times of Irving’s life while doing earlier periodical work.

According to the Library of America’s chronology, Irving spends 1807-1808 doing the following:

• “Co-authors Salmagundi, which receives much praise, with William Irving and James Kirke Paulding.
• Is a sympathetic spectator at the trial of Aaron Burr in Richmond.
• Makes periodic visits to Philadelphia.
• Father dies October 1807; sister Ann Dodge dies May 1808.
• Continues to visit the Hoffman household and falls in love with Matilda Hoffman.
• With Peter Irving, conceives the idea of a burlesque historical guidebook to New York. Begins work on it June 1808” (1095).**

It’s almost unimaginable to think of losing father and sister in less than a year, all the while falling in love with Matilda Hoffman, who herself passes away, a little later, in the spring of 1809. The country deals with Aaron’s Burr’s charge of treason, and through all of life’s difficulties, Irving co-writes, anonymously, articles for Salmagundi with his brother William and James Kirke Paulding. He also begins work on more satire, as he plans A History of New York.

Today, in class, I wanted to talk about the pedagogy of genre with regard to satire, and to do some writing activities involving different kinds of satire, but I decided to hold that thought until next week when we read portions of A History of New York. Right now, asking students to critique our society in a satirical way feels forced, but I thought mocking the early days of the Republic of Texas next week, alongside Irving’s mocking of New York, would open up a useful application of the genre. I’ll report back next week to let you know how Texas measures up to New York. Until then.

*“Salmagundi, N., Sense 2.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, September 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/4177634030.

**Irving, Washington. History, Tales and Sketches. Library of America. 1983.