The stone mansion before which the travellers stood, awaiting answer to Cuff’s loud knock on the heavy mahogany door, had already acquired antiquity and memories. It was then, as to all south of the porch which now sheltered the three visitors, ninety-six years old, and as to the rest of the eastern front thirty-three, so that its newest part was twice the age of Elizabeth herself.

Her grandfather’s grandfather, the first lord of the manor, built the southern portion in 1682, a date not far from that of the erection of his upper house, called Philipse Castle, at what is now Tarrytown,—but whether earlier or later, let the local historians dispute. This southern portion comprised the entire south front, its length running east and west, its width going back northward to, but not including, the large east entrance-hall, into which opened the southern door of the east front. The new part, attached to the original house as the upright to the short, broad base of the reversed L, was added by Elizabeth’s grandfather, the second 33 lord, in 1745. The addition, with the eastern section of the old part, was thereafter the most used portion, and the south front yielded in importance to the new east front. The two porched doors in the latter front matched each other, though the southern one gave entrance to the fine guests in silk and lace, ruffles and furbelows, who came up from New York and the other great mansions of the county to grace the frequent festivities of the Philipses; while the northern one led to the spacious kitchen where means were used to make the aforesaid guests feel that they had not arrived in vain.

The original house, rectangular as to its main part, had two gables, and, against its rear or northern length, a pent-roofed wing, and probably a veranda, the last covering the space later taken by the east entrance-hall. The main original building, on its first floor, had (and has) a wide entrance-hall in its middle, with one large parlor on each side. The second floor, reached by staircase from the lower hall, duplicated the first, there being a middle hall and two great square chambers. Overhead, there was plentiful further room beneath the gable roof. Under the western room of the first floor was the earlier kitchen, which, before 1745, served in relation to the guests who entered by the southern door exactly as thereafter the new kitchen served in relation to those entering by the eastern door,—making 34 them glad they had come, by horse or coach, over the long, bad, forest-bordered roads. Adjacent to the old kitchen was abundant cellarage for the stowing of many and diverse covetable things of the trading first lord’s importation.

The Neperan joined the Hudson in the midst of wilderness, where Indians and deer abounded, when Vrederyck Flypse caused the old part of the stone mansion to grow out of the green hill slope in 1682. He planted a foundation two feet thick and thereupon raised walls whose thickness was twenty inches. He would have a residence wherein he might defy alike the savage elements, men and beasts. For the front end of his entrance-hall he imported a massive mahogany door made in 1681 in Holland,—a door in two parts, so that the upper half could be opened, while the lower half remained shut. The rear door of that hall was similarly made. Ponderous were the hinges and bolts, being ordinary blacksmith work. Solid were the panel mouldings. He brought Holland brick wherewith to trim the openings of doorways and windows. He laid the floor of his aforesaid kitchen with blue stone. The chimney breasts and hearthstones of his principal rooms were seven feet wide.

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—

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.

It was years and years afterward, and when and because the eagle had decided to attempt the said despoiling, that there was a change of times at Philipse Manor Hall. Meanwhile had young Frederick, and Maria, and Elizabeth, and their brothers and sisters arrived on the scene. What could one have expected of the ease-loving, beauty-loving, book-loving, luxury-loving, garden-loving, and wide-girthed lord of the manor—connected by descent, kinship, and marriage with royal office-holding—but Toryism? In fact, nobody did expect else of him, for though he tried in 1775 to conceal his sympathy with the cause of the King, the powers in revolt 43 inferred it, and took measures to deter him from actively aiding the British forces. His removal to Hartford, his return to the manor-house,—where he was for awhile, in the fall of 1776, at the time of the battle of White Plains,—his memorable business trip to New York, and his parole-breaking continuance there, heralded the end of the old rÉgime in Philipse Manor Hall. The historians say that at that time of Colonel Philipse’s last stay at the hall, Washington quartered there for awhile, and occupied the great southwestern chamber. Doubtless Washington did occupy that chamber once upon a time, but his itinerary and other circumstances are against its having been immediately before or immediately after the battle of White Plains. Some of the American officers were there about the time. As for the colonel’s family, it did not abandon the house until 1777. With the occasions when, during the first months of Revolutionary activity in the county, use was sought of the secret closets and the underground passage thoughtfully provided by the earlier Philipses in days of risk from Indians, fear of Frenchmen, and dealings with pirates, this history has naught to do.

In 1777, then, the family took a farewell view of the old house, and somewhat sadly, more resentfully, wended by familiar landmarks to New York,—to await there a joyous day of returning, when the 44 King’s regiments should have scattered the rebels and hanged their leaders. John Williams, steward of the manor, was left to take care of the house against that day, with one white housemaid, who was of kin to him, and one black slave, a man. The outside shutters of the first story, the inside shutters above, were fastened tight; the bolts of the ponderous mahogany doors were strengthened, the stables and mills and outbuildings emptied and locked. Much that was precious in the house went with the family and horses and servants to New York. Yet be sure that proper means of subsistence for Williams and his two helpers were duly stowed away, for the faithful steward had to himself the discharge of that matter.

So wholesale a departure went with much bustle, and it was not till he returned from seeing the numerous party off, and found himself alone with the maid and the slave in the great entrance-hall, which a few minutes before had been noisy with voices, that Williams felt to the heart the sudden loneliness of the place. The face of Molly, the maid, was white and ready for weeping, and there was a gravity on the chocolate visage of black Sam that gave the steward a distinctly tremulous moment. Perhaps he recalled the prediction of the Indian, and had a flash of second sight, and perceived that the third lord of the manor was to be the last. 45 Howbeit, he cleared his throat and set black Sam to laying in fire-wood as for a siege, and Molly to righting the disorder caused by the exodus; betook himself cellarward, and from a hidden place drew forth a bottle of an old vintage, and comforted his solitude. He was a snug, honest, discreet man of forty, was the steward, slim but powerful, looking his office, besides knowing and fulfilling it.

But, as the months passed, he became used to the solitude, and the routine of life in the closed-up, memory-haunted old house took on a certain charm. The living was snug enough in what parts of the mansion the steward and his two servitors put to their own daily use. As for the other parts, the great dark rooms and entrance-halls, we may be sure that when the steward went the rounds, and especially after a visit to the wine-cellar, he found them not so empty, but peopled with the vague and shifting images of the many beings, young and old, who had filled the house with life in brighter days. Then, if ever, did noise of creaking stair or sound as of human breath, or, perchance, momentary vision of flitting face against the dark, betray the present ghost of some old-time habituÉ of the mansion.

When the raiding and foraging and marauding began in the county, the manor-house was not molested. The partisan warfare had not yet reached its magnitude. After the battle of White Plains 46 in 1776, the British had retained New York City, while the main American army, leaving a small force above, had gone to New Jersey. Late in 1777, the British main army, leaving New York garrisoned, had departed to contest with the Americans for Philadelphia. Not until July, 1778, after Monmouth battle, did the British main army return to New York, and the American forces form the great arc, with their chief camp in upper West Chester County. Then was great increase of foray and pillage. The manor-house was of course exempt from harm at the hands of King’s troops and Tory raiders, while it was protected from American regulars by Washington’s policy against useless destruction, and from the marauding “Skinners” by its nearness to the British lines and by the solidity of its walls, doors, and shutters. Its gardens suffered, its picket fences and gate fastenings were tampered with, its orchards prematurely plucked. But its trees were spared by the British foragers, and the house itself was no longer in demand as officers’ quarters, being too near King’s Bridge for safe American occupancy, but not sufficiently near for British. Hessians and Tories, though, patrolled the near-by roads, and sometimes Continental troops camped in the neighboring hills. In 1778, the American Colonel Gist, whose corps was then at the foot of Boar Hill, north of the manor-house, was 47 paying his court to the handsome widow Babcock, in the parsonage, when he was surprised by a force of yagers, rangers, and Loyalist light horse, and got away in the nick of time.[2] The parsonage, unlike the manor-house, was often visited by officers on their way hither and thither, but I will not say it was for this reason that Miss Sally Williams, the sister of Colonel Philipse’s wife, preferred living in the parsonage with the Babcocks rather than in the great deserted mansion.

On a dark November afternoon, Williams had sent black Sam to the orchard for some winter apples, and the slave, after the fashion of his race, was taking his time over the errand. The shades of evening gathered while the steward was making his usual rounds within the mansion. Molly, whose housewifely instincts ever asserted themselves, had of her own accord made a dusting tour of the rooms and halls. She was on the first landing of the stairway in the east hall, just about to finish her task in the waning light admitted by the window over the landing and by the fanlight over the front door, when, as she applied her cloth to the mahogany balustrade, the door of the east parlor opened, and Williams came out of that dark apartment.

“Lord, Molly!” he said, a moment later, having started at suddenly beholding her. “I thought you were a ghost! It’s time to get supper, I think, 48 from the look of the day outside. I’ll have to make a light.”

From a closet in the side of the staircase he took a candle, flint, and tinder, talking the while to Molly, as she rubbed the balusters. Having produced a tiny candle-flame that did not light up half the hall, Williams started towards the dining-room, but stopped at a distant sound of galloping horses, which were evidently coming down the Albany road. The steward and the maid exchanged conjectures as to whether this meant a British patrol or “Rebel” dragoons, “Skinners” or Hessian yagers, Highlanders, or Loyalist light horse; and then observed from the sound that the horses had turned aside into the Mile Square road.

But now came a new sound of horses, and though it was of only a few, and those walking, it gave Williams quite a start, for the footfalls were manifestly approaching the mansion. They as manifestly stopped before that very hill. And then came a sharp knock on the mahogany door.

“See who it is,” whispered Molly.

Williams hesitated. The knock was repeated.

“Who’s there?” called out Williams.

There was an answer, but the words could not be made out.

“Who?” repeated Williams.

This time the answer was clear enough.

“It’s I, Williams! Don’t keep me standing here in the wind all night.”

“It’s Miss Elizabeth!” cried Molly; and Williams, in a kind of daze of astonishment, hastily unlocked, unbolted, and threw open the door.