It was poetic justice, therefore, that in this house eighteen months later should occur the formal evacuation of the United States by the British. On the afternoon of May 6, 1783, two barges landed at the Ferry. In one was George Washington, Commander-in-Chief; in the other Governor Clinton of New York State. Presently a sloop-of-war appeared, and from it landed General Sir Guy Carleton, Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Forces. The three men met in the front room of the Livingston House, and at a sturdy round walnut table which stands in the house today General Sir Guy Carleton signed on the dotted line, renouncing a claim upon America which was first staked out by Sir Walter Raleigh. Good Queen Bess would have sworn like a lady at the spectacle; Guy Carleton, instead, marched out between four companies of American infantry at present-arms, saluted the flag, invited General Washington and Governor Clinton to dine aboard his sloop, and after an exceedingly good dinner fired a seventeen-gun salute for the guest who throughout the war had been scornfully referred to by Parliament as “Geo. Washington, Esqre.”
From Philip Livingston, its Revolutionary occupant, the house passed into the hands of Peter Van Brugh Livingston, a rich, righteous and rigid citizen who was a member of two legislatures, and who acquired most of the real estate in Dobbs Ferry. A small parcel of this real estate he gave to the Episcopal Church. When a local tavern-keeper applied for admission to the church Van Brugh Livingston’s influence and indignant protests almost kept the boniface out of reach of salvation. The house was purchased from Livingston by Stephen Archer, a gentle Quaker. His wife at her death-bed promised him that if he would build a bay window in the house and sit at that window on a Friday night, she would return to him. He built the bay window and every Friday night for twenty years sat peering out, straining his eyes to distinguish her ghostly form from the shadows of the ancient horse-chestnut tree. This is a true story of spiritualism: she never came back. Stephen Archer’s daughter married a Dr. Hasbrouck and the house became his property upon her death. His fourth wife succeeded in outliving him, and in the light of Van Brugh Livingston’s prejudice against tavern-keepers, it is interesting to recall the latest episode in the possession of the ancient dwelling.
Messmore Kendall, a lawyer of New York, was driving down Broadway one morning when he saw a sign in the dooryard of the Hasbrouck house advertising it for sale. He stopped. Inquiry from a woman who answered his knock brought out the information that financial stress had forced the sale of the house to a brewer who proposed to open a road house within its sacred walls. Mr. Kendall went on to the city. He learned from the real-estate brokers that the title was to be transferred to the brewer at 12 o’clock of the following day. At 12 o’clock there was no brewer in sight. At 1 o’clock Mr. Kendall had bought the house. At 5 o’clock of the same afternoon the brewer appeared, but the house had been saved forever.
So, instead of the clash of weapons of a dance orchestra, the Livingston House today hears the call of the birds from the garden. Instead of a coat of scarlet paint, a swinging tavern-sign, and the installation of new “service facilities” the house has undergone a complete restoration to its early beauty.
Where a less knowing eye would have altered for the sake of altering, he has directed changes only as they would preserve the feeling of self-effacing Colonial occupancy. Where the austerity of the period might easily have been made inelastic, he has made you sense the vital nearness of the glorious immortals who were there. Where the old frame of the building settled back after a century of service and gave an informal tilt to the door-frames, instead of replacing them with new he has tailored the old doors a trifle. He has left the old floors, for flooring such as men laid in those days was not to be disciplined for little irregularities. Between the drawing room and the study hangs the original front door, with a lock three hands broad, and the great key that turned on the invader’s last good-bye. Even electricity came into the house in a quiet disguise. If it is candle-light, and you should peer into the low-studded dining-room, with its musket and pewter, and its great fireplace, you will be forgiven if your fancy pictures a Continental cavalryman bolting his supper at the end of the long table. Perfectly sane people have heard Lafayette’s light step on the stair.
Given far less to work with than the Jumel Mansion a few miles away, the restorer of the Livingston house has avoided the error of formalizing the restoration. For years he had been collecting rare furniture for just such an emergency. Out of the storage warehouse and into the drawing room came a pair of sofas and a little table from the shop of Duncan Phyfe; two of Thomas Chippendale’s mirrors; a pair of girandoles of unusual grace; a very early and tinkly American piano; and a dozen other things, each wearing a veil of antiquity over her charms. Like a group of delightful reunited old ladies they fell to chirruping and whispering, agreeing that this was so like home, when one—and it was probably one of the mischievous girandoles, who give back your reflection askew—suggested with a sparkle in her eyes: “Let’s pretend we have always been here!” A whisper of assent fled from one to another. The Dutch clock in the hallway chimed agreement, the Queen Anne sofa on the landing heard and sighed happily, and one of Washington’s own chairs in the study, which had left Mount Vernon a century ago, remarked that he had always regarded Dobbs Ferry as a comfortable asylum.
They will hush their chatter when you come in, and you cannot surprise them at it. But on a June night you may sit outside and watch the moon rise through the tracery of an old wistaria on the south portico. Listen sharply: when a white parrokeet waddles in from the blue shadows of the garden, and a voice is singing, and there is the lightest feather of air moving, it will bring their whisper through the window to you. The illusion is yours; they are at home, among their own.
The Longfellow House
© D.McK