The Hudson Part 9

Here Lord Grey disembarked in October, 1778, and crossed to Hackensack Valley, "surprising and ma.s.sacring Col. Bayler's patriots, despite their surrender and calls for mercy."

Indian Head (510 feet) about two miles north of Alpine Gorge, is the highest point of the Palisades.

Eve o'er our path is stealing fast; Yon quivering splendors are the last; His latest glories fringe the height Behind us with their golden light.

_Robert C. Sands._

=Yonkers to West Point=

Pa.s.sing Glenwood, now a suburban station of Yonkers, conspicuous from the Colgate mansion near the river bank, built by a descendant of the English Colgates who were familiar friends of William Pitt, and leaders of the Liberal Club in Kent, England, and "Greystone," once the country residence of the late Samuel J. Tilden, Governor of New York, and presidential candidate in 1876, we come to

=Hastings=, where a party of Hessians during the Revolutionary struggle were surprised and cut to pieces by troops under Colonel Sheldon. It was here also that Lord Cornwallis embarked for Fort Lee after the capture of Fort Was.h.i.+ngton, and here in 1850 Garibaldi, the liberator of Italy, whose centennial was observed July 4, 1907, frequently came to spend the Sabbath and visit friends when he was living at Staten Island. Although there is apparently little to interest in the village, there are many beautiful residences in the immediate neighborhood, and the Old Post road for two miles to the northward furnishes a beautiful walk or driveway, well shaded by old locust trees. The tract of country from Spuyten Duyvil to Hastings was called by the Indians Kekesick and reached east as far as the Bronx River.

=Dobbs Ferry= is now at hand, named after an old Swedish ferryman. The village has not only a delightful location but it is also beautiful in itself. In 1781 it was Was.h.i.+ngton's headquarters, and the old house, still standing, is famous as the spot where General Was.h.i.+ngton and the Count de Rochambeau planned the campaign against Yorktown; where the evacuation of New York was arranged by General Clinton and Sir Guy Carleton the British commander, and where the first salute to the flag of the United States was fired by a British man-of-war. A deep glen, known as Paramus, opposite Dobbs Ferry, leads to Tappan and New Jersey. Cornwallis landed here in 1776. It is now known as Snedden's Landing.

A lovely country for a summer encampment, breezy hills commanding wide prospects, shady valleys watered by bright pastoral streams, the Bronx, the Spraine and the Neperan.

_Was.h.i.+ngton Irving._

At Dobbs Ferry, June 14, 1894, the base-stone of a memorial shaft was laid with imposing ceremony by the New York State Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, which erected the monument. There were one thousand Grand Army veterans in line, and addresses by distinguished orators and visitors. The Society and its guests, including members of the cabinet, officers of the army and navy, and prominent men of various States, accompanied by full Marine Band of the navy yard, with a detachment of Naval Reserves, partic.i.p.ated in the event.

Voyagers up the river that day saw the "Miantonomoh" and the "Lancaster," under the command of Rear-Admiral Gherardi, anch.o.r.ed mid-stream to take part in the exercises. During the Revolution this historic house was leased by a Dutch farmer holding under Frederick Phillipse as landlord. After the war it was purchased by Peter Livingston and known since as the Livingston House. Arnold and Andre were to have met here but providentially for the American cause, the meeting took place at Haverstraw.

The Indian name of Dobbs Ferry was Wecquaskeck, and it is said by Ruttenber that the outlines of the old Indian village can still be traced by numerous sh.e.l.l-beds. It was located at the mouth of Wicker's Creek which was called by the Indians Wysquaqua.

=Tappan Zee.=--The steamer is now entering Irving's rich domain, and Tappan Zee lapping the threshold of "Sunnyside," seems almost a part of his very dooryard. The river, which has averaged about a mile in breadth, begins to gradually widen at Hastings, and almost seems like a gentle, reposeful lake.

=Piermont=, whose "mile-long-pier," built many years ago by the Erie Railroad, hardly mars the landscape so great is the majesty of the river, is seen on the west bank with Tower Hill rising above it from which four states are seen. The view includes Long Island, the Sound and the Orange Mountains on the south, with the Catskills to the north and Berks.h.i.+res to the northeast. Louis g.a.y.l.o.r.d Clark, a friend of Irving, and an early literary a.s.sociate had a cottage on Piermont Hills.

We have a charming position for our French encampment along the Hudson among rocks and under magnificent tulip trees.

_Count Dumas._

Turning to the eastern sh.o.r.e, we see "Nuits," the Cottinet residence, Italian in style, built of Caen stone, "Nevis," home of the late Col.

James Hamilton, son of Alexander Hamilton, the George L. Schuyler mansion, the late Cyrus W. Field's, and many pleasant places about Abbotsford, and come to

=Irvington=, on the east bank, 24 miles from New York, once known as Dearman's, but changed in compliment to the great writer and lover of the Hudson, who after a long sojourn in foreign lands, returned to live by the tranquil waters of Tappan Zee. In a letter to his brother he refers to Sleepy Hollow as the favorite resort of his boyhood, and says: "The Hudson is in a manner my first and last love, and after all my wanderings and seeming infidelities, I return to it with a heartfelt preference over all the rivers of the world." As at Stratford-on-Avon every flower is redolent of Shakespeare, and at Melrose every stone speaks of Walter Scott, so here on every breeze floats the spirit of Was.h.i.+ngton Irving. A short walk of half a mile north from the station brings us to his much-loved

="Sunnyside."= Irving aptly describes it in one of his stories as "made up of gable-ends, and full of angles and corners as an old c.o.c.ked hat. It is said, in fact, to have been modeled after the hat of Peter the Headstrong, as the Escurial of Spain was fas.h.i.+oned after the gridiron of the blessed St. Lawrence." Wolfert's Roost, as it was once styled (Roost signifying Rest), took its name from Wolfert Acker, a former owner. It consisted originally of ten acres when purchased by Irving in 1835, but eight acres were afterwards added. With great humor Irving put above the porch entrance "George Harvey, Boum'r,"

Boumeister being an old Dutch word for architect. A storm-worn weather-c.o.c.k, "which once battled with the wind on the top of the Stadt House of New Amsterdam in the time of Peter Stuyvesant, erects his crest on the gable, and a gilded horse in full gallop, once the weather-c.o.c.k of the great Van der Heyden palace of Albany, glitters in the suns.h.i.+ne, veering with every breeze, on the peaked turret over the portal."

Irving chose his residence in the valley, not amid the mountains; by the fields and meadows of the broad Tappan Zee, rather than the Highlands; in a congenial region suited to his temperament.

_Dr. Bethune._

About fifty years ago a cutting of Walter Scott's favorite ivy at Melrose Abbey was transported across the Atlantic, and trained over the porch of "Sunnyside," by the hand of Mrs. Renwick, daughter of Rev. Andrew Jeffrey of Lochmaben, known in girlhood as the "Bonnie Jessie" of Annandale, or the "Blue-eyed La.s.sie" of Robert Burns:--a graceful tribute, from the shrine of Waverley to the nest of Knickerbocker:

A token of friends.h.i.+p immortal With Was.h.i.+ngton Irving returns:-- Scott's ivy entwined o'er his portal By the Blue-eyed La.s.sie of Burns.

Scott's cordial greeting at Abbotsford, and his persistence in getting Murray to reconsider the publication of the "Sketch Book," which he had previously declined, were never forgotten by Irving. It was during a critical period of his literary career, and the kindness of the Great Magician, in directing early attention to his genius, is still cherished by every reader of the "Sketch Book" from Manhattan to San Francisco. The hearty grasp of the Minstrel at the gateway of Abbotsford was in reality a warm handshake to a wider brotherhood beyond the sea.

In purple tints woven together The Hudson shakes hands with the Tweed, Commingling with Abbotsford's heather The clover of Sunnyside's mead.

_Wallace Bruce._

=Was.h.i.+ngton Irving.=--While he was building "Sunnyside," a letter came from Daniel Webster, then Secretary of State, appointing him minister to Spain. It was unexpected and unsolicited, and Webster remarked that day to a friend: "Was.h.i.+ngton Irving to-day will be the most surprised man in America." Irving had already shown diplomatic ability in London in promoting the settlement of the "North Western Boundary," and his appointment was received with universal favor. Then as now Sunnyside was already a Mecca for travelers, and, among many well-known to fame, was a young man, afterwards Napoleon the Third. Referring to his visit, Irving wrote in 1853: "Napoleon and Eugenie, Emperor and Empress! The one I have had as a guest at my cottage, the other I have held as a pet child upon my knee in Granada. The last I saw of Eugenie Montijo, she was one of the reigning belles of Madrid; now, she is upon the throne, launched from a returnless sh.o.r.e, upon a dangerous sea, infamous for its tremendous s.h.i.+pwrecks. Am I to live to see the catastrophe of her career, and the end of this suddenly conjured up empire, which seems to be of such stuff as dreams are made of?

I confess my personal acquaintance with the individuals in this historical romance gives me uncommon interest in it; but I consider it stamped with danger and instability, and as liable to extravagant vicissitudes as one of Dumas' novels." A wonderful prophecy completely fulfilled in the short s.p.a.ce of seventeen years.

How many such men as Was.h.i.+ngton Irving are there in America. G.o.d don't send many such spirits into this world.

_Lord Byron._

The aggregate sale of Irving's works when he received his portfolio to Spain was already more than half a million copies, with an equal popularity achieved in Britain. No writer was ever more truly loved on both sides of the Atlantic, and his name is cherished to-day in England as fondly as it is in our own country. It has been the good fortune of the writer to spend many a delightful day in the very centre of Merrie England, in the quiet town of Stratford-on-Avon, and feel the gentle companions.h.i.+p of Irving. Of all writers who have brought to Stratford their heart homage Irving stands the acknowledged chief. The sitting-room in the "Red Horse Hotel," where he was disturbed in his midnight reverie, is still called Irving's room, and the walls are hung with portraits taken at different periods of his life. Mine host said that visitors from every land were as much interested in this room as in Shakespeare's birth-place. The remark may have been intensified to flatter an American visitor, but there are few names dearer to the Anglo-Saxon race than that on the plain headstone in the burial-yard of Sleepy Hollow. Sunnyside is scarcely visible to the Day Line tourist. A little gleam of color here and there amid the trees, close to the river bank, near a small boat-house, merely indicates its location; and the traveler by train has only a hurried glimpse, as it is within one hundred feet of the New York Central Railroad. Tappan Zee, at this point, is a little more than two miles wide and over the beautiful expanse Irving has thrown a wondrous charm. There is, in fact, "magic in the web" of all his works. A few modern critics, lacking appreciation alike for humor and genius, may regard his essays as a thing of the past, but as long as the Mahicanituk, the ever-flowing Hudson, pours its waters to the sea, as long as Rip Van Winkle sleeps in the blue Catskills, or the "Headless Horseman" rides at midnight along the Old Post Road _en route_ for Teller's Point, so long will the writings of Was.h.i.+ngton Irving be remembered and cherished. We somehow feel the reality of every legend he has given us. The spring bubbling up near his cottage was brought over, as he gravely tells us, in a churn from Holland by one of the old time settlers, and we are half inclined to believe it; and no one ever thinks of doubting that the "Flying Dutchman," Mynheer Van Dam, has been rowing for two hundred years and never made a port.

It is in fact still said by the old inhabitants, that often in the soft twilight of summer evenings, when the sea is like gla.s.s and the opposite hills throw their shadows across it, that the low vigorous pull of oars is heard but no boat is seen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NORTHERN POINT OF PALISADES]

Here was no castle in the air, but a realized day-dream.

Irving was there, as genial, humorous and imaginative as if he had never wandered from the primal haunts of his childhood and his fame.

_Henry T. Tuckerman._