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Elihu Hubbard Smith and The New York Friendly Club, 1795–1798

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

James E. Cronin
James E. Cronin*
Affiliation:
Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri
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Extract

In the year 1798 even an ardent Federalist could be vexed at the grossly inaccurate picture of America to be found in British periodicals. One young Federalist who was more annoyed than most was Elihu Hubbard Smith, a New York physician and literary man and erstwhile Hartford Wit. On his own initiative, Smith wrote a series of brief biographies of the Wits which he sent to John Aikin, editor of the Monthly Magazine and British Register. In an accompanying letter he pointed out to Aikin that his magazine not only ignorantly misrepresented America to the British public but also taught many young Americans to see their country in a false and unfavorable light. He offered the biographical sketches as a step toward correcting the situation and also proposed that he organize his friends into a corps of correspondents to ensure Mr. Aikin's progressive enlightenment. Of these friends he wrote:

There exists in this city, a small association of men, who are connected by mutual esteem, & habits of unrestricted communication. They are of different professions and occupation; of various religious or moral opinions; & tho' they coincide in the great outlines of political faith, they estimate very variously many of the political transactions of the men who have, from time to time directed the councils of the nation. This diversity of sentiment, however, as it has never affected their friendship, has made them more active in investigation; & tho' they may have formed different judgments concerning facts, has led them to a general concurrence in the facts themselves.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 64 , Issue 3 , June 1949 , pp. 471 - 479
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1949

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References

1 These biographies of Timothy Dwight, John Trumbull, Joel Barlow, David Humphreys, and Lemuel Hopkins, along with an article on the Anarchiad which Smith almost certainly wrote, appeared in the Monthly Magazine and British Register, vi (July through December, 1798). The biographies were subsequently reprinted in America in the Farmer's Museum or Lay Preacher's Gazette, April 1, 8, 15, September 2, 23, 1799; in The Spirit of the Farmers' Museum, and Lay Preacher's Gazette (Walpole, New Hampshire, 1801); and in the Monthly Magazine and American Review, i & ii (1799–1800).

2 A copy of this letter appears in Smith's unpublished diary following an entry for April 16, 1798. The letter in slightly different form, signed “H”, appeared in the Monthly Magazine and British Register, vi (July, 1798), 1–3.

3 See A History of the American Theatre (New York, 1832), p. 114, and The Life of Charles Brockden Brown (Philadelphia, 1815), i, 57. The variation in names can be explained in part, of course, by the fact that membership changed from time to time after 1798. This, however, does not explain the conflict regarding the names of Charles Brockden Brown and Richard Alsop, both of whom were frequently in New York between 1795 and 1798.

4 See a letter from James Kent to William Kent, April 5, 1847, Kent Papers, ix, Library of Congress.

5 The MS diary is now on deposit at the Yale University Library.

6 See Allen W. Read, “The Philological Society of New York, 1788”, American Speech, ix (April, 1934), 131–136.

7 See note 4.

8 With Mitchill and Miller, Smith founded the Medical Repository, the first, and for many years the best, American medical magazine. The first issue appeared on July 28, 1797.

9 See the Commercial Advertiser, February 8, 1798.

10 (New York, 1798.)