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 35 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—
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“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, 37 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 38 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 39 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 40 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 41 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, 42 “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.