when the Colonial Dames took over its custody. Their restoration not
only has made the utmost of the material they found, but has brought
to the house a collection of articles which are uniformly good and are
in some instances rare and beautiful. The long hall has tall spotless
wainscoting and hunting paper, a carven balustrade and newel post;
in a low-studded dining-room a set of 1770 Dutch chairs surrounds an
Empire table, in a corner stands a buffet whose builder died a century
and a half ago; at the fireplace are Delft tiles nearly as aged as the
fireplace itself, and there is an odd Chinese paper on the walls. In
the parlor is the Venus-and-Cupid paper hung for Dorothy Q’s wedding,
in the window frames is glass made by a Quincy in the first glassworks
in America. You may read in one of those panes the initials “J H” as
you may find the writer’s full name on the Declaration of Independence,
and in the pane below, in the same hand, “You I love, and you alone.”
You will be interested in Tutor Flynt’s bed, built in a recess of the
brookside bedroom. You may be mildly thrilled by the Indian-proof
shutters, mystified by the secret staircase which follows the course of
the chimney, and delighted with the kitchen William Coddington built,
with its eight-inch beams, Dutch oven, churn, spinning-wheel, and a
musket over the mantel for inviting Indians to dinner.
There are ever so many things in the house today to call up a Quincy
tradition, for if you scratch almost any chapter of New England history
you will find a Quincy tradition underneath. Take away its Hoars,
Lowells, Holmeses, Adamses, Wendells, Hancocks, Sewalls--to mention
only a few of the Quincy connections--and you have left hardly enough
to make a Monday _Transcript_.
And yet their generic importance was the least of their concerns.
“Could I ever suppose,” wrote John Adams, “that family pride were in
any way excusable, I should think a descent from a line of vigorous
independent New England farmers for a hundred years was a better
foundation for it than a descent through royal or noble scoundrels ever
since the flood.”
THE TIMOTHY DEXTER MANSION
[Illustration:
© D.McK
THE TIMOTHY DEXTER MANSION
Over in a corner of the garden stood an Indian chieftain, next to him
William Pitt, and beyond the two the martial figure of General Morgan.
The Goddess of Fame, Louis XVI, John Jay, the King of Russia, Solomon,
Venus, the Governor of New Hampshire--these were a few of the forty
“immortals” in his garden of celebrities. In a prominent position stood
a portrait in pine of Lord Dexter himself, labeled “I am the greatest
man in the EAST.”]
THE TIMOTHY DEXTER MANSION
Lord Dexter is a man of fame;
Most celebrated is his name;
More precious far than gold that’s pure,
Lord Dexter shine for evermore.
--_Jonathan Plummer._
Yes, Jonathan Plummer wrote that jingle. It is from the only survivor
of a gross of eulogies he wrote of Lord Dexter. And quite proper
that he should. He was Lord Dexter’s poet laureate, hired, clothed
and fed to produce eulogies on demand. His poetry was awful, and the
tragedy is that he knew it. Said he didn’t like to read too much good
verse because it made his own look sorry. But when a man has given up
peddling fish and racy European pamphlets in order to study for the
ministry, and neither the ministry nor the melodrama pays, he can’t
be blamed, especially if he has the appetite of an ox and the soul of
a poet, for going to work for anyone as poet laureate. Lord Dexter
outfitted him in a long black cloak with gold stars on the lapels, and
fringe, and a black under dress, a huge cocked hat, and a gold-headed
cane. There was a great row about the fringe: Jonathan refused to wear
it, Lord Dexter pooh-poohed. _Pooh-poohed a poet laureate!_ Still,
Maecenas was Maecenas: Jonathan wore the fringe.
Timothy Dexter was a leather-dresser, born in Malden in 1743. Treating
leather to simulate “morocco” was a new art, which he mastered, and
which, on account of the demand for “morocco” for women’s shoes,
built him a nice fortune. He married a thrifty widow, who had a
little huckster business of her own. They emerged from the period of
the Revolution with a son and daughter, and a few thousand dollars.
Continental money had dropped to two-and-sixpence on the pound, and the
securities of Massachusetts issued to support the money had tumbled to
the same depths. John Hancock and Thomas Russel, Bostonians of large
fortunes, bought in many of these securities to oblige their friends
and to hearten the public’s morale, which was as low as its money.
Timothy Dexter heard of it, and risked every loose dollar he had in the
same investment. Then Hamilton’s funding system went into operation and
made him a wealthy man, who need never dress another hide as long as he
lived.
He had gambled that the United States Constitution was a fixture, and
he had won. He played more money on the same color, and won again and
again. Charlestown, still convalescing from a severe fire, was not to
the liking of this new-laid magnate. He moved to Newburyport, after
Salem and Boston the busiest port in the Commonwealth. He bought two
fine estates, occupied one for a short time, and then moved to the
other. As the property of a prominent merchant it had been one of
the fine houses of a community of steady, prosperous people, whose
philosophy was drawn from the Old Testament, education from the Three
R’s, and deportment from a rigid Puritan ancestry. Into its complacent
calm Timothy Dexter came bellowing like a bull in a china shop, and
proceeded to build the china shop about him.
You may have wondered about the source of the iron-dog-and-Diana
tendency on the lawns of our captains of industry. It dates from Lord
Dexter, and in justice to him it should be said that he set a mark
that neither posterity nor Adolphus Busch nor Carl Hagenbeck nor
Ex-Senator Clark could begin to approach. They may have paid more for
their cupolas and summer-houses and plaster-of-Paris bubchen, but
Timothy Dexter, the self-made lord, leather-dresser, landscape gardener
and architect, finished the race with a permanent world’s record
before they were born. He took a square colonial house of straight and
dignified proportions, polished it with bright paint, and set gilt
balls and railings and minarets upon its roof, till from the sea it
looked like a Christmas tree gone mad. There was a magnificent garden
between the house and the highway, full of flowers and fruit that were
the envy of a community of husbandmen, but mere nature was not allowed
to go on unassisted.
“Hear me, good Lord,” he wrote. “I am agoing to let your children know
now, good Lord, what has been in the world a great ways back--not old
Plymouth, but stop to Adam and Eve.”
Accordingly there rose in the garden clusters of single columns, and
groups of wooden arches, about fifteen feet high, and presently the
astonished natives of Newburyport saw them capped with wooden effigies.
Before the main doorway was a Roman arch, and upon it, reading from
left to right, John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson--all
life size, with John Adams uncovered because Dexter would not permit
anyone to stand at Washington’s right with his hat on. Jefferson
he thought was a trifle obscure, so he engaged an artist to paint
“Declaration of Independence” upon the scroll in its author’s wooden
hand. The artist had lashed himself to the column, had spaced the
lettering, and had painted the letters “DEC-,” when Lord Timothy,
squinting up from below, remarked:
“That’s not the way to spell ‘Constitution’!”
“You don’t want the Constitution,” called the artist. “You want
‘Declaration of Independence’!”
“I want ‘Constitution’!” roared Dexter, “and ‘Constitution’ I will
have!”
His recollection of the Declaration of Independence was foggy, but he
knew that he had made most of his money by the adhesive properties of
the Constitution, and he was not going back on his talisman now. The
artist refused to make the statue ridiculous, and Dexter charged into
the house, charged out with a loaded pistol, and as the artist left
across-country, fired, missed the artist--but hit the house.
Over in a corner of the garden stood an Indian chieftain, next to him
William Pitt, and beyond the two the martial figure of General Morgan.
Morgan was not quite satisfactory, so a few coats of paint made him
over into Bonaparte. The Goddess of Fame, Louis XVI, John Jay, the
King of Russia, Solomon, Venus, the Governor of New Hampshire--these
were a few of the forty “immortals” in his garden of celebrities.
In a prominent position stood a portrait in pine of Lord Dexter
himself, labeled “I am the greatest man in the EAST.” Four lions, two
_couchant_, two _passant_, stood guard beside him to prove it. This
caption originally included the North, South and West, and what sudden
access of modesty caused him to censor it is a buried secret. When the
hurricane of 1815 toppled most of the figures from their pinnacles,
they were sold at auction. Pitt brought one dollar, Fame five, the
Traveling Preacher fifty cents, the Indian chief was set up in a
cornfield to scare crows, and Lord Timothy, the greatest man in the
East, found no bidders. That is fame.
His gallery was the product of expert wood-carvers in Newburyport and
Salem, men who were turning out creditable work for the figureheads
of the vast merchant fleet that made Salem a port known round the
world. It cost him not a cent less than $15,000, twice the price he
paid for the estate. Upon the interior of the house he lavished the
same attention, and imported from France the last word in flamboyant
furniture, voluptuous draperies, and generally meretricious _objets
d’art_. His agents had more taste than he, to be sure, but if a worthy
piece found its way into the house, it was sure to be stained and
damaged in the next carouse. In his business dealings with Hancock
and Russel he had caught glimpses of their libraries, and it occurred
to him that the greatest man in the East should own fine books, so he
bought them by the linear yard in costly bindings. He rarely read them,
and guests relieved him of the finer engravings with which they were
illustrated. In the same way he filled the house with paintings, which
were so bad that not even his guests cared to steal them. The dearest
of all his hobbies was a collection of clocks and watches. Once a week
they were set running and regulated; each day he visited them all, and
gave a word of encouragement or censure to each, from the great Dutch
fellow who prophesied approaching rain, to the daintiest enameled
chronometer in the hilt of a French fan. The fruits and blossoms of his
garden were as keen a source of satisfaction to him as they were to
the maidens and urchins of the town. After a few experimental visits
had revealed the clumsy vulgarity of his attentions to all women, nice
girls never went to see Dexter’s museum. To the small boy, however,
he was the personification of all that was grand and fantastic;
furthermore, they could scent his berries and plums and melons for a
radius of five miles, no matter which way the wind blew.
It is quite right to assume that even a successful speculation
in government paper could hardly finance the upkeep of such an
outrageously extravagant menâge. Where did the money come from?
Everyone in New England, as his notoriety spread, asked the same
question. The most picturesque reply is from his own pen--a chapter
from a tract called “Pickle for the Knowing Ones,” which he wrote and
published, and which, with a few italicized explanatory notes, follows:
HOW DID TIMOTHY DEXTER GET HIS MONEY ye (_he_) says: bying whale
bone for staing (_staying_) for ships . in grosing (_gross_) three
hundred & 40 tons--bort all in boston, salum and all in Noue york,
under Cover . oppenly told them for my ships; they all laffed. so I
had at my oan pris. I had four Counning men for Rounners; thay found
the horne, as I told them to act the fool . I was full of Cash . I had
nine tun of silver on hand at that time--all that time the Creaters
(_creatures_) more or less laffing. it spread very fast . here is the
Rub--in fifty days thay smelt a Rat--found where it was gone to Nouebry
Port--spekkelaters swarming like hell houns--to be short with it I made
seventey five per sent--one tun and a halfe of silver on hand and over--
one more spect--Drole a Nuf--I Dreamed of warming pans three nites;
that they would doue in the west inges (_Indies_) . (_He did not dream
this, but was put up to it by the chaffing of a group of mischievous
ship-clerks about the Port. Warming pans were about as necessary in
the West Indies as coals in Newcastle._) I got no more than fortey two
thousand--put them in nine vessels for difrent ports. that tuck good
hold. (_It did: to the astonishment of New England, the warming pans
were found to be excellent utensils in which to roast coffee, and the
lids equally useful in skimming hot sugar syrup._) I cleared sevinty
nine per sent . the pans thay made use of them for Coucking--blessed
good in Deade (_indeed_) missey (_monsieur_) got nise handel--very
good masser (“_Massa_”) for Coukey (_cooking; he here reproduces the
dialect of the French and British West Indian negroes._) Now burn my
fase the best thing I Ever see in borne days. I found I was very luckky
in spekkelation.
I Dreamed that the good book was Run Down in this Countrey nine years
gone, so low as halfe prise and Dull at that--the bibel I means. I had
the Ready Cash. by holl sale I bort twelve per sent under halfe pris:
thay cost fortey one sents Each bibbel--twentey one thousand--I put
them into twenty one vessels for the west inges and sent a text that
all of them must have one bibel in every family, or if not thay would
goue to hell--and if thay had Dun wiked, flie to the bibel and on thare
Neas and kiss the bibel three times and look up to heaven annest (_and
ask_) for forgivnes, my Captteins all had Compleat orders--here Coms
the good luck: I made one hundred per sent & littel over, then I found
I had made money anuf. I hant (_haven’t_) speckalated sence old time,
by government secourities I made forty seven thousands Dolors--that is
the old afare. Now I toald the all, the sekrett. Now be still, let me A
lone; Dont wonder Noe more houe I got my money, boaz (_boys_).
If there were space it could be devoted to his successful corner of
the opium market, to his land speculations, and to other sounder
investments, such as the Essex Merrimack bridge, which kept his coffers
full. But there is not, if we are to have a glimpse of the motley
crew who fawned about him and lived at his expense. Plummer, the poet
laureate and jingle-monger we have seen, Plummer, who told Dexter that
the Druids crowned their laureates with mistletoe, and whom Dexter duly
crowned, amidst great ceremony, with parsley, there being no mistletoe
in the garden. Then there was a Newburyport schoolmaster who fell out
of the graces of the town because he took his pupils to walk in the
fields and taught them the names of the birds and flowers, used charts
and globes in geography lessons, performed simple chemical experiments
which the parents soundly suspected were tricks, and believed in
the lecture system more than in the birch rod. With a smattering of
astronomy and a fertile imagination this man attached himself to Dexter
in the capacity of astrologer and chief confidant. He was probably in
league with Madam Hooper and Moll Pitcher, two seeresses of rich local
reputation, for Dexter often called upon them to solve his future.
There was Burley, called Dwarf Billy, a giant wrestler who stood
six-feet-and-seven-inches in his socks when he wore them; Dexter hired
him as a sort of watchman, porter and body-guard, to do his fighting
for him. It was Dwarf Billy whom Dexter called upon to put a tipsy
sea-captain off the place, after he had wagered that no two men Dexter
had could put him out. Looking up to Burley’s summit, the sailor put
his guinea in his lordship’s hands, saying: “By Jupiter, if this is
your dwarf, how big are your giants?”
Hogarth never drew a stranger company. It was downright Elizabethan in
its romantic depravity. Barred from the company of intelligent, modest
people by the pride which would not permit him to play the hypocrite,
Dexter brought his society to him, and cared very little about its
ancestry, so long as it gave him adulation and echoed his tipsy
amiability. The house was infested with shady adventurers and blowzy
females from the ports, come to gather a little money and pass on; no
fine day went by but travelers came to see this remarkable man at close
hand, to flatter him, to hear him tell the story of conferring upon
himself the title of “Lord”; to carry some souvenir of his tireless
eccentricity back to the folks at home, and you may believe that it
lost nothing in the telling. The riff-raff of the town attended a
funeral which he advertised in his honor, and which he watched from
behind the curtains of an upper window while a heavy mahogany coffin he
had bought was borne to the summer house where he expected some day to
rest. He was annoyed that his epileptic son, being drunk enough to weep
lavishly, was the only one who mourned, and that Plummer did not put
enough genuine fire into the funeral oration.
Once in a while a visitor crossed him, and he rushed to the house for
a pistol; one such adventure cost him a term in the Ipswich gaol,
though his aim was so poor that he never hit anyone. For a time he held
public office, that of “informer of deer,” which carried the duty of
arousing the town when deer were seen in the vicinity. Even the beasts
of the wilderness laughed at him--no deer ever ventured near during
his term. With books to read but no mind to read them with, his wife
long since fled from his home, his son half-mad and his daughter wholly
so, Dexter, feigning a feverish interest in affairs of which he knew
absolutely nothing, became an object of contemptuous amusement even to
the gypsies of Dogtown who passed his house to peddle berries. Today
the rankness and the nearness of him has passed, and it is hard to find
for Timothy Dexter any emotion beyond that of profound pity.
He died in 1806 and was buried in a simple grave in a public cemetery.
A sensible, methodical will disposed of his property, and the house
passed into other hands, which cleared out his forest of statuary, tore
down the gilt balls, and took the masquerade costume off the building
whose dignity he had so unceremoniously insulted. In the process
Timothy Dexter, “Lord” by his own acclamation, has been sunk without
trace. The house today is quite the most imposing in a town unusually
blessed with Colonial homes, but it is not Dexter’s. Dexter is wholly
dead.
His greatest work, the “Pickle for the Knowing Ones,” must never die.
Superlatives can damn it here forever, and any attempt to dissect
its philosophy must await the collaboration of a specialist in the
psychology of insanity, a student of Chaucerian spelling, and an
apostle of tolerance. When those three meet, we shall understand the
man. Meanwhile, the “Pickle” is worth reading.
To his second edition he added this postscript:
fouder (_further_) mister Printer the Nowing ones complane of my book
the fust edition had no stops I put in A Nuf here and thay may pepper
and salt it as thay plese
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THE KENDALL HOUSE
[Illustration:
© D.McK
THE KENDALL HOUSE
Here Washington and Rochambeau planned the Yorktown campaign. From the
upper windows you may look over the roofs of the town where André and
Arnold plotted to betray the United States. Across the Hudson you may
see the faint outlines of the village of Tappan, where André was held
prisoner, and where Washington shared his breakfast with the convicted
spy. At the foot of the hill below you is the landing where British
dignitaries came to plead for André’s life.]
THE KENDALL HOUSE
A white house with solid vertigris blinds stands comfortably beside the
Post road. There is a little old cannon on the lawn, a sad bell-mouthed
field piece with its jaw jutted fiercely out to bark at any British
man-o’-war that presumes to come back up the Hudson. A green ridge
rises behind the house, setting it off like Wedgwood ware, and a gentle
brook idles down the slope toward the river.
Set in a jog of the stone wall at the highway is a memorial tablet
which has evidently gone unnoticed by the gentlemen who write histories
for primary schools--who are supposed to watch the fires on our
national shrines, and to toss a bright epithet, an apt name, or a bit
of patriotic tinder on the coals. In missing this Dobbs Ferry house
they are clearly guilty of neglect of duty. It has a story that goes
clear down to the stuff every American believes he is made of. If we
borrow a stock phrase from the supply of the school historian and call
this house the “Birthplace of Victory” we shall not be far from the
fact, nor serving ill a spot which recalls with rich significance the
travail in which our nation was born.
In 1780 there were three invading British armies rooted on the Atlantic
coast: Clinton had driven Washington off Manhattan island in 1776 and
had already held the city for four years; Cornwallis made Yorktown a
base for expeditions into Virginia and the Carolinas, and Tarleton held
Charleston. For four years the enemy had hoped to effect a junction
between his forces in Canada and those in New York, and the Hudson
was to be his highway. For four years Washington had hovered like
an eagle over the river, wheeling now into Westchester, now swooping
upon Jersey. Inadequately equipped, he dared not take the offensive.
He had to be content to wait for the time when Clinton might relax his
vigilance upon the city, then to strike, brilliantly and savagely,
but the sum of these maneuvers was only to harass the enemy, not to
unseat him. Twice since Washington’s time has his fortitude been
matched in our history: once by Lincoln, and once by Lee. Once, in our
own lifetime, it has been equalled by the French nation. It was from
France, in 1780, that our relief ultimately came.
After four years of war, with British patrols making frequent raids
through Yonkers and over the upper acres of the Philipse estate,
with British warships plying up and down the Hudson at will past the
silenced batteries of Forts Washington and Lee, with the Cowboys and
Skinners of both armies making life wretched throughout the neutral
ground in which Dobbs Ferry lay, the village was in ill temper. It lies
opposite the northern end of the Palisades, and while the British held
New York it was the most southerly ferry safe for American despatch
riders from Westchester County to Jersey and the south--a vital link in
the chain of communication between the scattered states. So Dobbs Ferry
saw plenty of skirmishing. Earthworks were thrown up in the village;
the remains of an ancient redoubt may be discovered today after
patient search near Broadway and Livingston Avenue, and the Livingston
mansion, the most pretentious house in town, asked neither exemption
nor privilege and surrounded itself with trenches. No one knew when
the enemy might advance in force up the Albany Post Road, and in Dobbs
Ferry’s 1780-temper, no one proposed to let him march without a fight.