CHAPTER IV
The Story of Richmond Hill
If my days of fancy and romance were not past, I could find here an ample field for indulgence!
—Abigail Adams, writing from Richmond Hill House, in 1783.
had left dear St. John's,—for this time my pilgrim feet were turned a bit northward to a shrine of romance rather than religion. I meandered along Canal, and traversed Congress Street. Congress, by the bye, is about two yards long; do you happen to know it?
In a few moments, I was standing in a sort of trance at that particular point of Manhattan marked by the junction of Charlton and Varick streets and the end of Macdougal, about two hundred feet north of Spring. And there was nothing at all about the scenic setting, you would surely have said, to send anyone into any kind of a trance.
On one side of me was an open fruit stall; on another, a butcher's shop; the Café Gorizia (with windows flagrant with pink confectionery), and the two regulation and indispensable saloons to make up the four corners.
In a sentimentally reminiscent mood, I took out a notebook, to write down something of my impressions and fancies. But there was a general murmur of war-inflamed suspicion, and I desisted and fled. How was I to tell them that there, where I stood, in that very citified and very nearly squalid environment (it was raining that day too), I could yet see, quite distinctly, the shadowy outlines of the one-time glorious House of Richmond Hill?
They were high gates and ornate, one understands. I visualised them over and against the dull and dingy modern buildings. Somewhere near here where I was standing, the great drive-way had curved in between the tall, fretted iron posts, to that lovely wooded mound which was the last and most southern of the big Zantberg Range, and seemingly of a rare and rich soil. The Zantberg, you remember, started rather far out in the country,—somewhere about Clinton Place and Broadway,—and ran south and west as far as Varick and Van Dam streets.