has ever prevailed among naval commanders frequenting our port, that
the youthful captain of the sloop of war, _Albemarle_, Horatio
Nelson, present here in 1782 paid his _devoirs_ at the Castle to
the distinguished Governor-General Sir Frederick Haldimand, and partook
of the hospitalities usually shown to visitors of distinction? At his
romantic time of life did Nelson, like many subsequent lovers, indulge
in a sentimental promenade on the famed Castle terrace? Did he ever,
at the witching-hour when the citadel evening-gun calls to barrack
military _beaux_, meet there the adorable Mary Simpson, the girl
for whose sake he was, he said, ready to quit the service? Southey,
as well as Lamartine, in their biographies of the hero of Trafalgar,
state that violence had to be used to tear the smitten Horatio from his
Quebec charmer. Miss Simpson after marrying Major Matthews, Secretary
to the Governor, removed to London with her husband who became Governor
of Chelsea Hospital.
A titled visitor of no ordinary rank entered the portals of the Castle
in 1787, Prince William Henry, Duke of Clarence, subsequently William
IV., King of England. He was then a roystering middy on board H. M.
frigate _Pegasus_, anchored in the port below the Château. A grand
ball was given there in his honour by Lord and Lady Dorchester.
A volume would not suffice to detail the brilliant receptions and state
balls given at the Castle during Lord Dorchester’s administration--the
lively discussions, the formal protests originating out of points of
precedence, burning _questions de jupons_ between the touchy magnates
of the old and those of the new _régime_; whether La Baronne de St.
Laurent would be admitted at the Château or not; whether a de Longueuil
or a de Lotbinière’s place was on the right of Lady Maria, the charming
consort of His Excellency Lord Dorchester, a daughter of the great
English Earl of Effingham; whether dancing ought to cease when their
Lordships the Bishops entered and made their bow to the representative
of royalty. Unfortunately, Quebec had then no Court Journal, so that
the generations following can have but faint ideas of all the witchery,
the stunning head-dresses, the _décolletées_, and high-waisted robes
of their stately grandmothers, whirled around in the giddy waltz by
whiskered, epauletted cavaliers, or else courtesying in the demure
_minuet de la cour_.
We are now nearing the stormy era of “Little King Craig.” Troublous
times are looming out portentously for the earnest, hospitable, but
stern Laird of the Castle, Sir James Henry Craig. The lightning cloud,
however, will burst over his successor, Sir George Prevost. As oft
before, the trumpet of Bellona has sounded; this time at Washington,
on the 18th of June, 1812. “Prepare for the Invader,” is repeated with
bated breath in the streets of Quebec.
“Five cannon taken at Detroit, are now lying in the Château Court,”
says the Quebec _Mercury_ of 27th October, 1813, whilst the
prisoners taken at Detroit, brought down to Quebec, await embarkation
for Boston for purposes of exchange. Quebec was martial with United
States uniforms--American prisoners--the Yankee Generals Winder,
Chandler and Winchester; Colonel Winfield Scott, later on General
Winfield Scott, who culled laurels in the Mexican War, and so many
other officers and privates, that the Governor of Canada scarcely knew
how to dispose of them. Colonel Scott remained in Canada from the date
of his surrender, 23d October, 1812, to the period of his departure
from Quebec, say May, 1813. But he was on _parole_ all the time.
In bringing to a close this brief sketch, may we not recall how many
representatives of royalty, under French and under English rule,
Viceroys, proud Dukes, distinguished Earls, martial Counts and Barons,
occasionally held there their Court, in quasi-regal style, in order to
keep up the prestige of France’s _Grand Monarque_ (Louis XIV.)
and thereby impress, the surrounding Indian tribes with his might;
or as worthy representatives of the British Crown in the New World:
Champlain, de Montmagny, D’Ailleboust, Lauzon, D’Argenson, de Mesy, de
Courcelles, stern old Frontenac, La Barre, Callières, de Vaudreuil,
de Ramsay, de Longueuil, de Beauharnois, de la Galissonnière, de
la Jonquière, Duquesne, General Murray, Sir Guy Carleton, Sir F.
Haldimand, Lord Dorchester, General Prescott, Sir James H. Craig, Sir
George Prevost, Sir James Kempt, Sir John Coape Sherbrooke, the Duke of
Richmond, Earl Dalhousie, Lord Aylmer?
SUNNYSIDE, TARRYTOWN
BENSON J. LOSSING
Approaching Tarrytown, we observe upon the left of the highway an
already populous cemetery covering the crown and slopes of a gentle
hill. Near its base is an ancient church, and a little beyond it flows
a clear stream of water, which the Indians called _Po-can-te-co_,
signifying a “run between two hills.” It makes its way in a swift
current from the back country between a hundred hills, presenting a
thousand scenes of singular beauty in its course. The Dutch named it
_Slaeperigh Haven Kill_, or Sleepy Haven Creek, and the valley in
the vicinity of the old church through which it flowed _Slaeperigh
Hol_, or Sleepy Hollow, the scene of Washington Irving’s famous
legend of that name.
The little old church is a curiosity. It was built, says an inscription
upon a small marble tablet on its front, by “Frederic Philips and
Catharine Van Cortland, his wife, in 1699,” and is the oldest church
edifice existing in the state of New York. It was built of brick and
stone, the former imported from Holland for the purpose. Over its
little spire still turns the flag-shaped vane of iron, in which is cut
the monogram of its founder (V F in combination, his name being spelt
in Dutch Vedryck Flypsen); and in the little tower hangs the ancient
bell, bearing the inscription in Latin: “_If God be for us, who can
be against us? 1685._” The pulpit and communion table were also
imported from Holland. The former was long since destroyed by the
iconoclastic hand of “improvement.”
At this quiet old church is the opening of Sleepy Hollow, upon the
shores of the Hudson, and near it is a rustic bridge that crosses the
_Po-can-te-co_, a little below the one made famous in Irving’s
legend by an amusing incident.[21] In this vicinity, according to
the legend, Ichabod Crane, a Connecticut schoolmaster, instructed
“tough, wrong-headed, broad-skirted, Dutch urchins” in the rudiments
of learning. He was also the singing-master of the neighbourhood.
Not far off lived old Baltus Van Tassel, a well-to-do farmer, whose
house was called _Wolfert’s Roost_. He had a blooming and only
daughter named Katrina, and Ichabod was her tutor in psalmody, training
her voice to mingle sweetly with those of the choir which he led at
Sabbath-day worship in the Sleepy Hollow Church. Ichabod “had a soft
and foolish heart towards the sex.” He fell in love with Katrina. He
found a rival in his suit in stalwart, bony Brom Van Brunt, commonly
known as Brom Bones. Jealousies arose, and the Dutchman resolved to
drive the Yankee schoolmaster from the country.
Strange stories of ghosts in Sleepy Hollow were believed by all, and by
none more implicitly than Ichabod. The chief goblin seen there was that
of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon
ball. This spectre was known all over the country as “The Headless
Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.”
[Illustration: “SUNNYSIDE”, IRVINGTON, NEW YORK]
About three miles below Tarrytown is _Sunnyside_, the residence
of Washington Irving. It is reached from the public road by a winding
carriage-way that passes here through rich pastures and pleasant
woodlands and then along the margin of a dell through which runs a
pleasant brook, reminding one of the merry laughter of children as it
dances away riverward and leaps in beautiful cascades and rapids into a
little bay a few yards from the cottage of _Sunnyside_.
Around that cottage and the adjacent lands and waters, Irving’s genius
has cast an atmosphere of romance. The old Dutch house--one of the
oldest in all that region--out of which grew that quaint cottage,
was a part of the veritable _Wolfert’s Roost_--the very dwelling
wherein occurred Katrina Van Tassel’s memorable quilting frolic that
terminated so disastrously to Ichabod Crane in his midnight race with
the “Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.” There, too, the veracious
Dutch historian, Diedrich Knickerbocker, domiciled while he was
deciphering the precious documents found there, “which, like the
lost books of Livy, had baffled the research of former historians.”
But its appearance had sadly changed when it was purchased by Mr.
Irving, about 1836, and was by him restored to the original form of
the _Roost_, which he describes as “a little, old-fashioned stone
mansion, all made up of gable ends, and as full of angles and corners
in an old cocked hat. It is said, in fact,” continues Mr. Irving,
“to have been modelled after the cocked hat of Peter the Headstrong,
as the Escurial was modelled after the gridiron of the blessed St.
Lawrence.” It was built, the chronicler tells us, by Wolfert Acker, a
privy councillor of Peter Stuyvesant, “a worthy, but ill-starred man,
whose aim through life had been to live in peace and quiet.” He sadly
failed. “It was his doom, in fact, to meet a head wind at every turn
and be kept in a constant fume and fret by the perverseness of mankind.
Had he served on a modern jury he would have been sure to have eleven
unreasonable men opposed to him.” He retired in disgust to this then
wilderness, built the gabled house and “inscribed over the door (his
teeth clenched at the time) his favourite Dutch motto ‘_Lust in Rust_’
(pleasure in quiet). The mansion was thence called _Wolfert’s Rust_
(Wolfert’s Rest), but by the uneducated, who did not understand Dutch,
_Wolfert’s Roost_.” It passed into the hands of Jacob Van Tassel,
a valiant Dutchman, who espoused the cause of the Republicans. The
hostile ships of the British were often seen in Tappan Bay, in front
of the _Roost_, and Cow Boys infested the land thereabout. Van Tassel
had much trouble: his house was finally plundered and burnt, and he was
carried a prisoner to New York. When the war was over, he rebuilt the
_Roost_, but in more modest style. “The Indian spring”--the one brought
from Rotterdam--“still welled up at the bottom of the green bank; and
the wild brook, wild as ever, came babbling down the ravine, and threw
itself into the little cove where of yore the water-guard harboured
their whale-boats.”
The “water-guard” was an acquatic corps, in the pay of the
Revolutionary government, organized to range the waters of the Hudson,
and keep watch upon the movements of the British. The _Roost_,
according to the chronicler, was one of the lurking-places of this
band and Van Tassel was one of their best friends. He was, moreover,
fond of warring upon his “own hook.” He possessed a famous “goose-gun”
that would send its shot half-way across Tappan Bay. “When the
belligerent feeling was strong upon Jacob,” says the chronicler of
the _Roost_, “he would take down his gun, sally forth alone, and
prowl along shore, dodging behind rocks and trees, watching for hours
together any ship or galley at anchor or becalmed. So sure as a boat
approached the shore, bang! went the great goose-gun, sending on board
a shower of slugs and buck shot.”
On one occasion Jacob and some fellow bush-fighters peppered a British
transport that had run aground. “This,” says the chronicler, “was
the last of Jacob’s triumphs; he fared like some heroic spider that
had unwittingly ensnared a hornet, to the utter ruin of its web. It
was not long after the above exploit that he fell into the hands of
the enemy, in the course of one of his forays, and was carried away
prisoner to New York. The _Roost_ itself, as a pestilent rebel nest,
was marked out for signal punishment. The cock of the _Roost_ being
captive, there was none to garrison it but his stout-hearted spouse,
his redoubtable sister, Notchie Van Wurmer, and Dinah, a strapping
negro wench. An armed vessel came to anchor in front; a boat full of
men pulled to shore. The garrison flew to arms, that is to say, to
mops, broomsticks, shovels, tongs, and all kinds of domestic weapons,
for, unluckily, the great piece of ordnance, the goose-gun, was absent
with its owner. Above all, a vigorous defence was made with that most
potent of female weapons, the tongue; never did invaded hen-roost make
a more vociferous outcry. It was all in vain! The house was sacked and
plundered, fire was set to each room, and in a few moments its blaze
shed a baleful light over the Tappan Sea.”
THE OLD WITCH HOUSE, SALEM
ESTHER SINGLETON
On the corner of Essex and North Streets, in Salem, there stands a
house that attracts many visitors, although it is neither picturesque
nor impressive. “The Old Witch House,” however, appeals to the
imagination, recalling one of the darkest chapters in the history of
this country,--the witchcraft mania of the Seventeenth Century.
This belief, transplanted from the Old Country, flourished luxuriantly
under the dark shadow of Puritanism. Although witchcraft was believed
in throughout the Middle Ages, the witch-mania proper begins in 1484
when Innocent VIII. gave the sanction of the Church to the prosecution
of all who were believed to practice sorcery; and soon after this the
famous _Malleus Maleficarum, or Hammer for Witches_ was drawn
up by two German inquisitors and a clergyman of Constance. In this
book witchcraft is described and a code for the trial of witches
systematized. Fires for burning witches blazed in nearly every town on
the Continent for nearly four centuries. In Germany the persecutions
were frightful, and in Geneva five hundred persons were burned in
three months in 1515–1516! The witch-mania was rampant in England and
Scotland, where in the Seventeenth Century a horrible class called
“witch finders” went from town to town, where, for the small fee
of twenty shillings, they discovered witches, subjecting innocent
persons--the old, the young, the attractive and unattractive, the
infirm and the ill, as well as the hale and hearty--to most inane
tests and cruel tortures till they confessed themselves bewitched. It
is said that the greatest number of legal executions in England took
place during the sitting of the Long Parliament (1640–1660), when three
thousand persons were put to death. This figure, however, does not
include those poor creatures who suffered death at the hands of the mob.
This witch-mania had, in great measure, abated at home when it broke
out in the British Colonies in America. A few trials occurred in
Maryland and Virginia and a few persons were hung in Connecticut;
but Massachusetts was the soil most favourable to the growth of this
terrible delusion. Salem has the distinction of having sent the
greatest number of victims to their unjust doom. The town became
panic-stricken and no one was safe. An historian writes:
“So violent was the popular prejudice against every appearance of
witchcraft, that it was deemed meritorious to denounce all that gave
the least reason for suspicion. Every child and every gossip was
prepared to recognize a witch, and no one could be certain of personal
safety. As the infatuation increased, many of the most reputable
females, and several males also, were apprehended and committed to
prison. There is good reason to believe that, in some instances, the
vicious and abandoned availed themselves of gratifying their corrupt
passions of envy, malice and revenge.”
[Illustration: THE OLD WITCH HOUSE, SALEM]
A graphic description of the Salem horrors is given in _Old Naumkeag_,
by Webber and Nevins (Salem, 1877):
“Salem witchcraft commenced during the month of February, 1692, at
the house of the Rev. Samuel Parris, in that part of the original
town, which is now Danvers. The daughter of Mr. Parris and his niece
Abigail Williams, aged nine and twelve years respectively, began to act
‘in a strange and unusual manner.’ They would utter loud and piteous
cries, creep into holes, hide under benches and put themselves into
odd postures. The physicians pronounced them bewitched, and all the
ministers were invited to meet at Mr. Parris’s house, and unite with
him in solemn religious services. As the interest in their actions
increased, they became more violent, and accused Tituba, a South
American slave in the Parris family, of having bewitched them. Mr.
Parris beat Tituba and compelled her to acknowledge herself guilty.
These children next complained of Sarah Goode and Sarah Osborne, and
then of two other women of excellent character, Corey and Nurse. All
were thrown into prison. John, Tituba’s husband, for his own safety,
accused others. The demon was thus let loose in the midst of the
people, but it was the demon of superstition rather than the demon of
witchery.”
The following list of those who were executed is also taken from the
same authorities:
“Rev. Geo. Burroughs, of Wells, Maine; Wilmot Reed, of Marblehead;
Margaret Scot, of Rowley; Susanna Martin, of Amesbury; Elizabeth
Howe, of Ipswich; Sarah Wildes and Mary Estes, of Topsfield; Samuel
Wardwell, Martha Currier and Mary Parker, of Andover; John Proctor,
Geo. Jacobs, Sen., John Willard, Sarah Goode, Rebecca Nurse, Giles
Corey and Martha Corey of Salem Village, Ann Pudeater, Bridget Bishop
and Alice Parker, of Salem.
“Corey was pressed to death, because he refused to speak, knowing that
speech would avail him nothing. His tongue was pressed out of his
mouth, but was forced in again by the sheriff with his cane. About 150
persons in all were accused of witchcraft, including nine children
varying from five to fourteen years.
“Various were the accusations brought against them, such as having
familiarity with ‘the black man,’ who it was claimed was ever by
their side whispering in their ear; holding days of hellish fasts
and thanksgivings; eating red bread and drinking blood; transforming
themselves and their victims into various forms; signing contracts with
Satan; entering his employ and yielding to his commands; afflicting
others by pinching, pricking with pins, striking, etc., while many
miles distant; and divers other accusations that would be laughed to
scorn at the present day. All matters of affliction or of discord
among the people, such as a controversy respecting the settlement of a
minister, which had for a time been going on; also the death of some
of the most influential of the citizens, were attributed to Satanic
influences. With such inflammable matter, in an age of superstition,
the result is not to be wondered at.
“Cotton Mather, one of the most learned ministers of that time, led in
the preaching to the people of sermons designed to inflame rather than
abate the panic. He adopted the doctrine of demons, and was exceedingly
energetic in endeavouring to spread the delusion into other parts of
the Colony. To him is largely ascribed the extent of the calamity.”
Victims were quickly dragged to “Witch Hill,” after being quickly
convicted. It is said that many speedy and informal trials took place
in the “Witch House,” which was in 1692 the residence of the intolerant
Judge Corwin.
Dr. Bentley says:
“From March to August, 1692, was the most distressing time Salem ever
knew: business was interrupted, the town deserted, terror was in
every countenance and distress in every heart. Every place was the
subject of some direful tale, fear haunted every street, melancholy
dwelt in silence in every place after the sun retired. The population
was diminished, business could not for some time recover its former
channels, and the innocent suffered with the guilty. But as soon as
the judges ceased to condemn, the people ceased to accuse. Terror at
the violence and the guilt of the proceedings, succeeded instantly
to the conviction of blind zeal, and what every man had encouraged,
all now professed to abhor. Every expression of sorrow was found in
Salem. The church erased all the ignominy they had attached to the
dead, by recording a most humble acknowledgment of their error. But a
diminished population, the injury done to religion and the distress of
the aggrieved were seen and felt with the greatest sorrow.”
When the authorities finally realized their error, all the victims
locked up in the Salem prison were discharged without trial, and those
suspected persons who had fled to other towns for safety were permitted
to return to their homes without fear of being molested.
Regarding this outbreak in Salem, James Russell Lowell writes:
“Credulity, as a mental and moral phenomenon, manifests itself in
widely different ways, according as it chances to be the daughter of
fancy or terror. The one lies warm about the heart as Folk-lore, fills
moonlit dells with dancing fairies, sets out a meal for the Brownie,
hears the tinkle of airy bridle-bells as Tamlane rides away with the
Queen of Dreams, changes Pluto and Proserpine into Oberon and Titania,
and makes friends with unseen powers as Good Folk; the other is a bird
of night, whose shadow sends a chill among the roots of the hair;
it sucks with the vampire, gorges with the ghoul, is choked by the
night-hag, pines away under the witches’ charm, and commits uncleanness
with the embodied Principle of Evil, giving up the fair realm of
innocent belief to a murky throng from the slums and stews of the
debauched brain....
“The Puritan emigration to New England took place at a time when the
belief in diabolic agency had been hardly called in question, much
less shaken. They brought it with them to a country in every way
fitted, not only to keep it alive, but to feed it into greater vigour.
The solitude of the wilderness (and solitude alone by dis-furnishing
the brain of its commonplace associations, makes it an apt theatre
for the delusions of imagination), the nightly forest noises, the
glimpse, perhaps, through the leaves, of a painted savage face,
uncertain whether of redman or Devil, but more likely of the latter,
above all, that measureless mystery of the unknown and conjectural
stretching away illimitable on all sides and vexing the mind, somewhat
as physical darkness does, with intimation and misgiving,--under all
these influences, whatever seeds of superstition had in any way got
over from the Old World would find an only too congenial soil in the
New. The leaders of that emigration believed and taught that demons
loved to dwell in waste and wooded places, that the Indians did homage
to the bodily presence of the Devil, and that he was especially enraged
against those who had planted an outpost of the true faith upon
this continent hitherto all his own. In the third generation of the
settlement, in proportion as living faith decayed, the clergy insisted
all the more strongly on the traditions of the elders, and as they all
placed the sources of goodness and religion in some inaccessible Other
World rather than in the soul of man himself, they clung to every shred
of the supernatural as proof of the existence of that Other World, and
of its interest in the affairs of this. They had the countenance of all
the great theologians, Catholic as well as Protestant, of the leaders
of the Reformation, and in their own day of such men as More and
Glanvil and Baxter. If to these causes, more or less operative in 1692,
we add the harassing excitement of an Indian war (urged on by Satan in
his hatred of the churches), with its daily and nightly apprehensions
and alarms, we shall be less astonished that the delusion in Salem
Village rose so high than that it subsided so soon.”