The Lads of Kilkenny
Washington Irving developed a group of friends upon his return from Europe that he referred to as the “Lads of Kilkenny” or “the Lads” for short. Their primary haunt was the mansion inherited by Kemble from his uncle, which they’d dubbed “Cockloft Hall.” Irving had a thing for using nicknames (which they would use to discuss their antics in secret), and every single member of the group (except himself) had one. The main ones in use being: Peter Irving: “the Doctor” Ebenezer Irving: “Captain Good-heart” William Irving: “the Membrane” Henry Brevoort: “Nuncle” James Paulding: “Billy Taylor” Gouverneur Kemble “the Patroon” Peter Kemble: “Petronius” David Porter: “Sinbad” Richard McCall: “Oorombates” Henry Ogden: “the Super-cargo” The group was bound together by intellectual and artistic pursuits, dinners, trips to the theater, ill-advised pranks and antics, good humor, and heavy drinking. Their drunken antics became staple memories among the group, recalled fondly by them in later life. Irving often liked to recall a story about Henry Ogden who, on his way home from one of their parties, had fallen through a grate that had been carelessly left open on the street and landed him in a vault below. Recounted the next morning, “The solitude was rather dismal at first” Ogden had recalled but when other drunken members of their party also accidentally fell into the vault with him “they had, on the whole, quite a pleasant night of it.” Another staple story among them was that one day, when they were all hella drunk and on their way home, they came across a man passed out drunk in the gutter outside of Trinity Church. Upon recognizing the man’s hat as being Henry Brevoort’s, they heroically decided to drag their inebriated friend back to his apartment and put him to sleep in his own bed. The only problem was that, as they discovered come morning, the man wasn’t Henry Brevoort, which resulted in laughter on all sides when they realized their mistake and none of them could figure out how the heck a stranger had come across Brevoort’s hat in the first place. Another anecdote involved a failed attempt at a drunken knighting ceremony where Peter Irving accidentally stabbed Richard McCall in the ass with a sword. Peter would recall the event saying “we made poor Dick McCall a knight, and I, as the senior of our order, dubbed him by some fatality on the seat of honor instead of the shoulder.” Another involved James Paulding who, probably passed out drunk, had been carried to his bed in the mansion by the rest of the lads while they chanted Mozart’s Requiem and buried him under all of the furniture in his room. Which, if you listen to it, makes this absolutely fucking ridiculous and I’ll never be able to hear this song the same way again. Other antics included games of leapfrog, tree climbing, playing pranks, and sporting about the lawn until they were exhausted, collapsing together onto the grass overlooking the river or together onto the drawing room couch and chairs for general group naps in the evening. Irving’s nephew, Pierre, would later write about their various antics, calling them “madcap pranks and juvenile orgies.” Among the Lads, four of their members were particularly close: Henry Brevoort, James Paulding, Gouverneur Kemble, and Washington Irving. Paulding’s son would write of the four of them saying that they “became more closely bound in an unusual friendship. The relations which united this little group were of the most intimate. A confidence even beyond that of brothers existed among them; a confidence which, it was believed, was never violated under any circumstances, on any hand. And there is no trace of any quarrel to the end of their days.” [Various sources mostly Washington Irving: The Definitive Biography of America’s first Bestselling Author by Brian Jay Jones, Literary life of James K Paulding by William Irving Paulding, and The Life and Letters of Washington Irving, Vol 1 by Pierre Munroe Irving]