THE MANOR-HOUSE.
The stone mansion before which the travellers stood, awaiting answer
to Cuff's loud knock on the heavy mahogany door, had already acquired
antiquity and memories. It was then, as to all south of the porch
which now sheltered the three visitors, ninety-six years old, and as
to the rest of the eastern front thirty-three, so that its newest part
was twice the age of Elizabeth herself.
Her grandfather's grandfather, the first lord of the manor, built
the southern portion in 1682, a date not far from that of the
erection of his upper house, called Philipse Castle, at what is now
Tarrytown,--but whether earlier or later, let the local historians
dispute. This southern portion comprised the entire south front, its
length running east and west, its width going back northward to, but
not including, the large east entrance-hall, into which opened the
southern door of the east front. The new part, attached to the
original house as the upright to the short, broad base of the
reversed L, was added by Elizabeth's grandfather, the second lord, in
1745. The addition, with the eastern section of the old part, was
thereafter the most used portion, and the south front yielded in
importance to the new east front. The two porched doors in the latter
front matched each other, though the southern one gave entrance to the
fine guests in silk and lace, ruffles and furbelows, who came up
from New York and the other great mansions of the county to grace
the frequent festivities of the Philipses; while the northern one led
to the spacious kitchen where means were used to make the aforesaid
guests feel that they had not arrived in vain.
The original house, rectangular as to its main part, had two gables,
and, against its rear or northern length, a pent-roofed wing, and
probably a veranda, the last covering the space later taken by the
east entrance-hall. The main original building, on its first floor,
had (and has) a wide entrance-hall in its middle, with one large
parlor on each side. The second floor, reached by staircase from the
lower hall, duplicated the first, there being a middle hall and two
great square chambers. Overhead, there was plentiful further room
beneath the gable roof. Under the western room of the first floor
was the earlier kitchen, which, before 1745, served in relation to
the guests who entered by the southern door exactly as thereafter
the new kitchen served in relation to those entering by the eastern
door,--making them glad they had come, by horse or coach, over the
long, bad, forest-bordered roads. Adjacent to the old kitchen was
abundant cellarage for the stowing of many and diverse covetable
things of the trading first lord's importation.
The Neperan joined the Hudson in the midst of wilderness, where
Indians and deer abounded, when Vrederyck Flypse caused the old part
of the stone mansion to grow out of the green hill slope in 1682. He
planted a foundation two feet thick and thereupon raised walls whose
thickness was twenty inches. He would have a residence wherein he
might defy alike the savage elements, men and beasts. For the front
end of his entrance-hall he imported a massive mahogany door made in
1681 in Holland,--a door in two parts, so that the upper half could be
opened, while the lower half remained shut. The rear door of that hall
was similarly made. Ponderous were the hinges and bolts, being
ordinary blacksmith work. Solid were the panel mouldings. He brought
Holland brick wherewith to trim the openings of doorways and windows.
He laid the floor of his aforesaid kitchen with blue stone. The
chimney breasts and hearthstones of his principal rooms were seven
feet wide.
Here, in feudal fashion, with many servants and slaves to do his
bidding, and tenants to render him dues, sometimes dwelt Vrederyck
Flypse, with his second wife, Catherine Van Cortlandt, and the
children left by his first wife, Margaret Hardenbrock; but sometimes
some of the family lived in New York, and sometimes at the upper
stone house, "Castle Philipse," by the Pocantico, near Sleepy Hollow
Church, of this Flypse's founding. He built mills near both his
country-houses, and from the saw-mill near the lower one did the
Neperan receive the name of Saw Mill River. He died in 1702, in his
seventy-seventh year, and the bones of him lie in Sleepy Hollow
Church.
But even before the first lord went, did "associations" begin to
attach to the old Dutch part of the mansion. Besides the leading
families of the province, the traders,--Dutch and English,--and the
men with whom he held counsel upon affairs temporal and spiritual,
public and private, terrestrial and marine, he had for guests red
Indians, and, there is every reason to believe, gentlemen who sailed
the seas under what particular flag best promoted their immediate
purposes, or under none at all. That old story never _would_ down, to
the effect that the adventurous Kidd levied not on the ships of
Vrederyck Flypse. The little landing-place where Neperan joined
Hudson, at which the Flypses stepped ashore when they came up from New
York by sloop instead of by horse, was trodden surely by the feet of
more than one eminent oceanic exponent of--
"The good old rule, the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power
And they should keep who can."
A great merchant may have more than one way of doing business, and I
would not undertake to account for every barrel and box that was
unladen at that little landing. Nor would I be surprised to encounter
sometime, among the ghosts of Philipse Manor Hall, that of the
immortal Kidd himself, seated at dead of night, across the table from
the first lord of the manor, before a blazing log in the seven-foot
fireplace, drinking liquor too good for the church-founding lord to
have questioned whence it came; and leaving the next day without an
introduction to the family.
This 1682 part of the house, in facing south, had the Albany road at
its left, the Hudson at its right, and at its front the lane that ran
by the Neperan, from the road to the river. Thus was the house for
sixty-three years. When the first lord's grandson, Elizabeth's
grandfather, in 1745 made the addition at the north, what was the east
gable-end of the old house became part of the east front of the
completed mansion. The east rooms of the old house were thus the
southeast rooms of the completed mansion, and, being common to both
fronts, gained by the change of relation, becoming the principal
parlor and the principal chamber. The east parlor, entered on the
west from the old hall, was entered on the north from the new hall;
and the new hall was almost a duplicate of the old, but its ceiling
decorations and the mahogany balustrade of its stairway were the more
elaborate. This stairway, like its fellow in the old hall, ascended,
with two turns, to a hall in the second story. Besides the new halls,
the addition included, on the first floor, a large dining-room and the
great kitchen; on the second floor, five sleeping-chambers, and, in
the space beneath the roof-tree, dormitories for servants and slaves.
Elizabeth's grandfather gave the house the balustrade that crowns its
roof from its northern to its southern, and thence to its western end.
He had the interior elaborately finished. The old part and its
decorations were Dutch, but now things in the province were growing
less Dutch and more English,--like the Philipse name and blood
themselves,--and so the new embellishments were English. The second
lord imported marble mantels from England, had the walls beautifully
wainscoted, adorned the ceilings richly with arabesque work in wood.
He laid out, in the best English fashion, a lawn between the eastern
front and the Albany post-road. He it was who married Joanna, daughter
of Governor Anthony Brockholst, of a very ancient family of
Lancashire, England; and who left provision for the founding of St.
John's Church, across the Neperan from the manor-house, and for the
endowment of the glebe thereof. And in his long time the manor-house
flourished and grew venerable and multiplied its associations. He had
five children: Frederick (Elizabeth's father), Philip, Susannah, Mary
(the beauty, wooed of Washington in 1756, 'tis said, and later wed by
Captain Roger Morris), and Margaret; and, at this manor-house alone,
white servants thirty, and black servants twenty; and a numerous
tenantry, happy because in many cases the yearly rent was but nominal,
being three or four pounds or a pair of hens or a day's work,--for the
Philipses, thanks to trade and to office-holding under the Crown, and
to the beneficent rule whereby money multiplies itself, did not have
to squeeze a living out of the tillers of their land. The lord of the
manor held court leet and baron at the house of a tenant, and
sometimes even inflicted capital punishment.
In 1751, the second lord followed his grandfather to the family vault
in Sleepy Hollow Church. With the accession of Elizabeth's father,
then thirty-one years old, began the splendid period of the mansion;
then the panorama of which it was both witness and setting wore its
most diverse colors. The old contest between English and French on
this continent was approaching its glorious climax. Whether they were
French emissaries coming down from Quebec, by the Hudson or by horse,
or English and colonial officers going up from New York in command of
troops, they must needs stop and pay their respects to the lord of the
manor of Philipsburgh, and drink his wine, and eat his venison, and
flirt with his stunning sisters. Soldiers would go from New York by
the post-road to Philipsburgh, and then embark at the little landing,
to proceed up the Hudson, on the way to be scalped by the red allies
of the French or mowed down by Montcalm's gunners before impregnable
Ticonderoga. Many were the comings and goings of the scarlet coat and
green. The Indian, too, was still sufficiently plentiful to contribute
much to the environing picturesqueness. But, most of all, in those
days, the mansion got its character from the festivities devised by
its own inmates for the entertainment of the four hundred of that
time.
For Elizabeth's mother, of the same given name, was "very fond of
display," and in her day the family "lived showily." Her husband (who
was usually called Colonel Philipse, from his title in the militia,
and rarely if ever called lord) had the house refurnished. It was he
who had the princely terraces made on the slope between the mansion
and the Hudson, and who had new gardens laid out and adorned with tall
avenues of box and rarest fruit-trees and shrubs. Doubtless his deer,
in their picketed enclosure, were a sore temptation to the country
marksmen who passed that way. Lady, or Madam, or Mrs. Philipse, the
colonel's wife, bedazzled the admiring inhabitants of West Chester
County in many ways, but there is a difference between authorities as
to whether it was she that used to drive four superb black horses over
the bad roads of the county, or whether it was her mother-in-law, the
second lord's wife. Certainly it was the latter that was killed by a
fall from a carriage, and certainly both had fine horses and
magnificent coaches, and drove over bad roads,--for all roads were bad
in those days, even in Europe, save those the Romans left.
Of all the gay and hospitable occasions that brought, through the
mansion's wide doors, courtly gentlemen and high-and-mighty ladies,
from their coaches, sleighs, horses, or Hudson sloops, perhaps none
saw more feasting and richer display of ruffles and brocade than did
the wedding of Mary Philipse and Captain Morris, seven years after the
death of her father, and two after the marriage of her brother. It was
on the afternoon of Sunday, Jan. 15, 1758. In the famous east parlor,
which has had much mention and will have more in course of this
narrative, was raised a crimson canopy emblazoned with the Philipse
crest,--a crowned golden demi-lion rampant, upon a golden coronet.
Though the weather was not severe, there was snow on the ground, and
the guests began to drive up in sleighs, under the white trees, at two
o'clock. At three arrived the Rev. Henry Barclay, rector of Trinity,
New York, and his assistant, Mr. Auchmuty. At half-past three the
beauteous Mary (did so proud a heart-breaker blush, I wonder?) and the
British captain stood under the crimson canopy and gold, and were
united, "in the presence of a brilliant assembly," says the old county
historian.[1] Miss Barclay, Miss Van Cortlandt, and Miss De Lancey
were the bridesmaids, and the groomsmen were Mr. Heathcote (of the
family of the lords of the manor of Scarsdale), Captain Kennedy (of
Number One, Broadway), and Mr. Watts. No need to report here who were
"among those present." The wedding did not occur yesterday, and the
guests will not be offended at the omission of their names; but one of
them was Acting Governor De Lancey. Colonel Philipse--wearing the
ancestral gold chain and jewelled badge of the keepers of the deer
forests of Bohemia--gave the bride away, and with her went a good
portion of the earth's surface, and much money, jewelry, and plate.
After the wedding came the feast, and the guests--or most of
them--stayed so late they were not sorry for the brilliant moonlight
of the night that set in upon their feasting. And now the legend! In
the midst of the feast, there appeared at the door of the banquet-hall
a tall Indian, with a scarlet blanket close about him, and in solemn
tones quoth he, "Your possessions shall pass from you when the eagle
shall despoil the lion of his mane." Thereupon he disappeared, of
course, as suddenly as he had come, and the way in which historians
have treated this legend shows how little do historians apply to their
work the experiences of their daily lives,--such an experience, for
instance, as that of ignoring some begging Irishwoman's request for "a
few pennies in the Lord's name," and thereupon receiving a volley of
hair-raising curses and baleful predictions. 'Tis easy to believe in
the Indian and the prophecy of a passing of possessions, even though
it was fulfilled; but the time-clause involving the eagle and the lion
was doubtless added after the bird had despoiled the beast.
It was years and years afterward, and when and because the eagle had
decided to attempt the said despoiling, that there was a change of
times at Philipse Manor Hall. Meanwhile had young Frederick, and
Maria, and Elizabeth, and their brothers and sisters arrived on the
scene. What could one have expected of the ease-loving, beauty-loving,
book-loving, luxury-loving, garden-loving, and wide-girthed lord of
the manor--connected by descent, kinship, and marriage with royal
office-holding--but Toryism? In fact, nobody did expect else of him,
for though he tried in 1775 to conceal his sympathy with the cause of
the King, the powers in revolt inferred it, and took measures to
deter him from actively aiding the British forces. His removal to
Hartford, his return to the manor-house,--where he was for awhile, in
the fall of 1776, at the time of the battle of White Plains,--his
memorable business trip to New York, and his parole-breaking
continuance there, heralded the end of the old regime in Philipse
Manor Hall. The historians say that at that time of Colonel Philipse's
last stay at the hall, Washington quartered there for awhile, and
occupied the great southwestern chamber. Doubtless Washington did
occupy that chamber once upon a time, but his itinerary and other
circumstances are against its having been immediately before or
immediately after the battle of White Plains. Some of the American
officers were there about the time. As for the colonel's family, it
did not abandon the house until 1777. With the occasions when, during
the first months of Revolutionary activity in the county, use was
sought of the secret closets and the underground passage thoughtfully
provided by the earlier Philipses in days of risk from Indians, fear
of Frenchmen, and dealings with pirates, this history has naught to
do.
In 1777, then, the family took a farewell view of the old house, and
somewhat sadly, more resentfully, wended by familiar landmarks to New
York,--to await there a joyous day of returning, when the King's
regiments should have scattered the rebels and hanged their leaders.
John Williams, steward of the manor, was left to take care of the
house against that day, with one white housemaid, who was of kin to
him, and one black slave, a man. The outside shutters of the first
story, the inside shutters above, were fastened tight; the bolts of
the ponderous mahogany doors were strengthened, the stables and mills
and outbuildings emptied and locked. Much that was precious in the
house went with the family and horses and servants to New York. Yet be
sure that proper means of subsistence for Williams and his two helpers
were duly stowed away, for the faithful steward had to himself the
discharge of that matter.
So wholesale a departure went with much bustle, and it was not till he
returned from seeing the numerous party off, and found himself alone
with the maid and the slave in the great entrance-hall, which a few
minutes before had been noisy with voices, that Williams felt to the
heart the sudden loneliness of the place. The face of Molly, the maid,
was white and ready for weeping, and there was a gravity on the
chocolate visage of black Sam that gave the steward a distinctly
tremulous moment. Perhaps he recalled the prediction of the Indian,
and had a flash of second sight, and perceived that the third lord of
the manor was to be the last. Howbeit, he cleared his throat and set
black Sam to laying in fire-wood as for a siege, and Molly to righting
the disorder caused by the exodus; betook himself cellarward, and from
a hidden place drew forth a bottle of an old vintage, and comforted
his solitude. He was a snug, honest, discreet man of forty, was the
steward, slim but powerful, looking his office, besides knowing and
fulfilling it.
But, as the months passed, he became used to the solitude, and the
routine of life in the closed-up, memory-haunted old house took on a
certain charm. The living was snug enough in what parts of the mansion
the steward and his two servitors put to their own daily use. As for
the other parts, the great dark rooms and entrance-halls, we may be
sure that when the steward went the rounds, and especially after a
visit to the wine-cellar, he found them not so empty, but peopled with
the vague and shifting images of the many beings, young and old, who
had filled the house with life in brighter days. Then, if ever, did
noise of creaking stair or sound as of human breath, or, perchance,
momentary vision of flitting face against the dark, betray the present
ghost of some old-time habitue of the mansion.
When the raiding and foraging and marauding began in the county, the
manor-house was not molested. The partisan warfare had not yet reached
its magnitude. After the battle of White Plains in 1776, the British
had retained New York City, while the main American army, leaving a
small force above, had gone to New Jersey. Late in 1777, the British
main army, leaving New York garrisoned, had departed to contest with
the Americans for Philadelphia. Not until July, 1778, after Monmouth
battle, did the British main army return to New York, and the American
forces form the great arc, with their chief camp in upper West Chester
County. Then was great increase of foray and pillage. The manor-house
was of course exempt from harm at the hands of King's troops and Tory
raiders, while it was protected from American regulars by Washington's
policy against useless destruction, and from the marauding "Skinners"
by its nearness to the British lines and by the solidity of its walls,
doors, and shutters. Its gardens suffered, its picket fences and gate
fastenings were tampered with, its orchards prematurely plucked. But
its trees were spared by the British foragers, and the house itself
was no longer in demand as officers' quarters, being too near King's
Bridge for safe American occupancy, but not sufficiently near for
British. Hessians and Tories, though, patrolled the near-by roads, and
sometimes Continental troops camped in the neighboring hills. In 1778,
the American Colonel Gist, whose corps was then at the foot of Boar
Hill, north of the manor-house, was paying his court to the handsome
widow Babcock, in the parsonage, when he was surprised by a force of
yagers, rangers, and Loyalist light horse, and got away in the nick of
time.[2] The parsonage, unlike the manor-house, was often visited by
officers on their way hither and thither, but I will not say it was
for this reason that Miss Sally Williams, the sister of Colonel
Philipse's wife, preferred living in the parsonage with the Babcocks
rather than in the great deserted mansion.
On a dark November afternoon, Williams had sent black Sam to the
orchard for some winter apples, and the slave, after the fashion of
his race, was taking his time over the errand. The shades of evening
gathered while the steward was making his usual rounds within the
mansion. Molly, whose housewifely instincts ever asserted themselves,
had of her own accord made a dusting tour of the rooms and halls. She
was on the first landing of the stairway in the east hall, just about
to finish her task in the waning light admitted by the window over the
landing and by the fanlight over the front door, when, as she applied
her cloth to the mahogany balustrade, the door of the east parlor
opened, and Williams came out of that dark apartment.
"Lord, Molly!" he said, a moment later, having started at suddenly
beholding her. "I thought you were a ghost! It's time to get supper, I
think, from the look of the day outside. I'll have to make a light."
From a closet in the side of the staircase he took a candle, flint,
and tinder, talking the while to Molly, as she rubbed the balusters.
Having produced a tiny candle-flame that did not light up half the
hall, Williams started towards the dining-room, but stopped at a
distant sound of galloping horses, which were evidently coming down
the Albany road. The steward and the maid exchanged conjectures as to
whether this meant a British patrol or "Rebel" dragoons, "Skinners" or
Hessian yagers, Highlanders, or Loyalist light horse; and then
observed from the sound that the horses had turned aside into the Mile
Square road.
But now came a new sound of horses, and though it was of only a few,
and those walking, it gave Williams quite a start, for the footfalls
were manifestly approaching the mansion. They as manifestly stopped
before that very hill. And then came a sharp knock on the mahogany
door.
"See who it is," whispered Molly.
Williams hesitated. The knock was repeated.
"Who's there?" called out Williams.
There was an answer, but the words could not be made out.
"Who?" repeated Williams.
This time the answer was clear enough.
"It's I, Williams! Don't keep me standing here in the wind all
night."
"It's Miss Elizabeth!" cried Molly; and Williams, in a kind of daze of
astonishment, hastily unlocked, unbolted, and threw open the door.