GHOST OF A BRITISH SPY.
Then there was the English spy who, legend says, was captured by a party of Americans and promptly hanged on the limb of a large tree that stood at the bend of the road. His ghost was for long a sad handicap to the neighborhood and, singular as it may seem, he is said to have played his wildest pranks with those who placed the greatest faith in him. But since the spread of the Mount Pleasant Cemetery down toward his abode little or nothing has been heard of his doings. One theory is that of late he has come within the orbits of so many other ghosts, but of a more respectable and orderly character, that he has become inextricably tangled, much as is reported of wireless messages when many amateurs assault the air.
HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT.
About fifty years ago Henry William Herbert, who wrote under the name of Frank N. Forrester, resided on the river bank within the present limits of the cemetery, his place being known as “The Cedars”. A queer, romantic figure about which much of fiction as well as truth has been woven.
To Mr. Boyden and others, whose youth was spent about here, this strange figure was a familiar sight, for the recluse used almost daily to walk down town, his shoulders enveloped in a shawl, and always with a troop of dogs at his heels. Those who so remember him rather resent the fact that his brawls have been made much of and his virtues neglected by such as write of him, for they recall him as an attractive man and pleasant companion with many kindly qualities. Herbert generally made a call at the Black Horse tavern which then stood at the “Stone Bridge”, and after a short stay would continue on to the Park House. He was apt to be brusque with those he did not like, and when “beyond his depth” through too great conviviality inclined to be ugly when opposed.
He was born in London April 7, 1807, and was educated at an English college. He came to New York in 1831, supporting himself by teaching and later by writing short stories, historical novels and books on sports, his “Field Sports of America” soon making his name a familiar one to the lovers of gun and rod.
A Newarker, who has written of him from personal knowledge, says:—
“It is a difficult matter to sift the good from the bad in Herbert’s character. He was in truth a most rare and singular being if he did not possess some virtues.
“When writing his celebrated work, ‘Field Sports of America’, he had access to the Newark Library; not content with the privileges there afforded, he cut out bodily leaves from ‘The Encyclopedia Britannica’, evidently unmindful of the selfishness and criminality of the act. There are some men made up of inconsistencies, and a strange agglomeration of moods. Herbert was one of them.
“There is nothing associated with Herbert’s life that is apt to strike a stranger favorably. He was a direct antithesis of Irving, who possessed a certain magnetic influence. The truth is Irving was a good man and Herbert was not. Herbert was endowed with rare genius, and those who have a desire to become convinced of this fact should read his works; they tower as far above the general literary productions of to-day as does the Oregon pine over the tender sapling. His characters are finely drawn—not overdrawn—his heroines are as pure as the purest, and his villains—distinctive in their characteristics—‘act well their parts’. Though not an extensive verse writer, Herbert was the author of some very creditable poetry, his translation of Æschylus’s ‘Prometheus Bound’ and ‘Agamemnon’ show ripe scholarship and otherwise redound to his credit.