WE MEET THE HAMPTON GHOST
There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple;
If the ill spirit have so fair a house,
Good things will strive to dwell with 't.
--THE TEMPEST.
Hampton is probably the largest of Maryland's old mansions, and the
beauty of it is more theatrical than the beauty of Doughoregan Manor;
for although the latter is the older of the two, the former is not only
spectacular by reason of its spaciousness, the delicacy of its
architectural details, and the splendor of its dreamlike terraced
gardens, but also for a look of beautiful, dignified, yet somehow tragic
age--a look which makes one think of a wonderful old lady; a belle of
the days of minuets and powdered wigs and patches; a woman no less
wonderful in her declining years than in her youth, but wonderful in
another way; a proud old aristocrat, erect and spirited to the last; her
bedchamber a storehouse of ivory lace and ancient jewelry, her memory a
storehouse of recollections, like chapters from romantic novels of the
days when all men were gallant, and all women beautiful: recollections
of journeys made in the old coach, which is still in the stable, though
its outriders have been buried in the slaves' burying ground these many
years; recollections of the opening of Hampton, when, as the story
goes, gay Captain Charles Ridgely, builder of the house, held a card
party in the attic to celebrate the event, while his wife, Rebecca
Dorsey Ridgely, a lady of religious turn, marked the occasion
simultaneously with a prayer-meeting in the drawing room; of the ball
given by the Ridgelys in honor of Charles Carroll's granddaughters, the
exquisite Caton sisters; of hunt meets here, long, long ago, and hunt
balls which succeeded them; of breakneck rides; of love-making in that
garden peopled with the ghosts of more than a century of lovers; of
duels fought at dawn. Of such vague, thrilling tales the old house seems
to whisper.
Never, from the moment we turned into the tree-lined avenue, leading to
Hampton, from the moment when I saw the fox hounds rise resentfully out
of beds which they had dug in drifts of oak leaves in the drive, from
the moment when I stood beneath the stately portico and heard the bars
of the shuttered doors being flung back for our admittance--never, from
my first glimpse of the place, have I been able to dispel the sense of
unreality I felt while there, and which makes me feel, now, that Hampton
is not a house that I have seen, but one built by my imagination in the
course of a particularly charming and convincing dream.
Stained glass windows bearing the Ridgely coat of arms flank the front
doorway, and likewise the opposing doorway at the end of the enormous
hall upon which one enters, and the light from these windows gives the
hall a subdued yet glowing illumination, so that there is something
spectral about the old chairs and the old portraits with which the walls
are solidly covered. There are portraits here by Gilbert Stuart and
other distinguished painters of times gone by, and I particularly
remember one large canvas showing a beautiful young woman in evening
dress, her hair hanging in curls beside her cheeks, her tapering fingers
touching the strings of a harp. She was young then; yet the portrait is
that of the great-grandmother, or great-great-grandmother, of present
Ridgelys, and she has lain long in the brick-walled family burying
ground below the garden. But there beneath the portrait stands the harp
on which she played.
One might tell endlessly of paneling, of the delicate carving of mantels
and overmantels, of chairs, tables, desks, and sofas of Chippendale,
Hepplewhite, Phyfe and Sheraton, yet giving such an inventory one might
fail utterly to suggest the feeling of that great house, with its sense
of homelike emptiness, its wealth of old furniture and portraits,
blending together, in the dim light of a late October afternoon, to form
shadowy backgrounds for autumnal reverie, or for silent, solitary
listening--listening to the tales told by the soughing wind outside, to
the whisper of embers in the fireplace, the slow somber tick of the tall
clock telling of ages past and passing, the ghostly murmur of the old
house talking softly to itself.
From the windows of the great dining-room one looks away toward Hampton
Gate, a favorite meeting place for the Elkridge Hunt, or, at another
angle, toward the stables where the hunters are kept, the old slave
cabins, and the overseer's house, with its bell tower--a house nearly
two hundred years old. But the library is perhaps the more natural
resting place for the guest, and it looks out over the garden, with its
enormous descending terraces, its geometrical walks and steps, its
beautiful old trees, and arbors of ancient box. Such terraces as these
were never built by paid labor.
We were given tea in the library, our hostess at this function being a
young lady of five or six years--a granddaughter of Captain John
Ridgely, present master of Hampton--who, with her pink cheeks, her
serious eyes and demeanor, looked like a canvas by Sir Joshua come to
life, as she sat in a large chair and ate a large red apple.
Nor did Bryan, Captain Ridgely's negro butler, fit less admirably into
the pervasive atmosphere of fiction which enveloped the place. In the
absence of his master, Bryan did the honors of the old house with a
style which was not "put on," because it did not have to be put
on--nature and a good bringing-up having supplied all needs in this
respect. There was about him none of that affectation of being a graven
image, which one so often notices in white butlers and footmen imported
from Europe by rich Americans, and which, of all shams, is one of the
most false and absurd, as carried out on both sides--for we pretend to
think these functionaries the deft mechanisms, incapable of thought,
that they pretend to be; yet all the time we know--and they know we
know--that they see and hear and think as we do, and that, moreover,
they are often enough observant cynics whose elaborate gentility is
assumed for hire, like the signboard of a sandwich man.
Bryan was without these artificial graces. His manner, in showing us the
house, in telling us about the various portraits, indicated some true
appreciation of the place and of its contents; and the air he wore of
natural dignity and courtesy--of being at once acting-host and
servitor--constituted as graceful a performance in a not altogether easy
rôle as I have ever seen, and satisfied me, once for all, as to the
verity of legends concerning the admirable qualities of old-time negro
servants in the South.
After tea, when fading twilight had deepened the shadows in the house,
we went up the stairway, past the landing with its window containing the
armorial bearings of the family in stained glass, and, achieving the
upper hall, crossed to a great bedchamber, the principal guest room, and
paused just inside the door.
And now, because of what I am about to relate, I shall give the names of
those who were present. We were: Dr. Murray P. Brush, A.B., Ph.D.,
acting Dean of Johns Hopkins University; Dr. John McF. Bergland of
Baltimore; my companion, Wallace Morgan, illustrator; and myself.
The light had, by this time, melted to a mere faint grayness sifting
like mist through the many oblong panes of several large windows.
Nevertheless I could discern that it was a spacious room, and from the
color of it and certain shadowy lines upon the walls, I judged that it
was paneled to the ceiling in white-painted wood. I am under the
impression that it contained a fireplace, and that the great four-post
bed, standing to the right of the doorway, was placed upon a low
platform, a step or two above the floor--though of this I am not quite
certain, the bulk of the bed and the dim light having, perhaps, deceived
me. The rest of the furniture in the room was dark in color, and massed
in heavy vague spots against the lighter background of the walls.
Directly before the door, at about the center of the wall against which
it was backed, stood something which loomed tall and dark, and which I
took to be either a gigantic clothespress or a closet built into the
room. Looking past the front of this obstruction, I saw one of the
windows; the piece of furniture was therefore exhibited sidewise, in
silhouette.
I do not think that I had definitely thought of ghost stories before,
and I know that ghosts had not been spoken of, but as I looked into this
room, and reflected on the long series of persons who had occupied it,
and on where they were now, and on all the stories that the room must
have heard, there entered my mind thoughts of the supernatural.
Having taken a step or two into the room, I was a little in advance of
my three friends, and as these fancies came strongly to me, I spoke over
my shoulder to one of them, who was at my right and a little behind me,
saying, half playfully:
"There ought to be ghosts in a room like this."
Hardly had I spoken when without a sound, and swinging very slowly, the
door of the large piece of furniture before me gently opened. My first
idea was that the thing must be a closet, built against the wall, with a
door at the back opening on a passageway, or into the next room, and
that the little girl whom we had met downstairs had opened it from the
other side and was coming in.
I fully expected to see her enter. But she did not enter, for, as I
learned presently, she was in the nursery at the time.
After waiting for an instant to see who was coming, I began to realize
that there was no one coming; that no one had opened the door; that,
like an actor picking up a cue, the door had begun to swing immediately
upon my saying the word "ghosts."
The appropriateness of the coincidence was striking. I turned quickly to
my friends, who were in conversation behind me, and asked:
"Speaking of ghosts--did you see that door open?"
It is my recollection that none of them had seen it. Certainly not more
than one of them had, for I remember my feeling of disappointment that
any one present should have missed so strange a circumstance. Some one
may have asked what I had seen; at all events I was full of the idea,
and, indicating the open door, I began to tell what I had seen,
when--exactly as though the thing were done deliberately to
circumstantiate my story--with the slow, steady movement of a heavy door
pushed by a feeble hand, the other portal of the huge cabinet swung
open.
This time all four of us were looking.
Presently, as we moved across the wide hall to go downstairs again,
Bryan came from one of the other chambers, whither, I think, he had
carried the young lady's supper on a tray.
"Are there supposed to be any ghosts in this house?" I asked him.
Bryan showed his white teeth in the semi-darkness. Whether he believed
in ghosts or not, evidently he did not fear them.
"Yes, sir," he said. "We're supposed to have a ghost here."
"Where?"
"In that room over there," he answered, indicating the bedroom from
which we had come.
We listened attentively to Bryan while he told how the daughter of
Governor Swan had come to attend a ball at Hampton, and how she had died
in the four-post bed in that old shadowy guest room, and of how, since
then, she had been seen from time to time.
"They's several people say they saw her," he finished. "She comes out
and combs her hair in front of the long mirror."
However, as we drove back to Baltimore that evening, we repeatedly
assured one another that we did not believe in ghosts.