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Satanstoe; Or, The Littlepage Manuscripts: A Tale Of The Colony, a novel by James Fenimore Cooper |
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_ CHAPTER I "Look you, _As You Like it_.
It is possible that which I am now about to write will be thought too homely, to relate to matters much too personal and private, to have sufficient interest for the public eye; but it must be remembered that the loftiest interests of man are made up of a collection of those that are lowly; and, that he who makes a faithful picture of only a single important scene in the events of single life, is doing something towards painting the greatest historical piece of his day. As I have said before, the leading events of my time will find their way into the pages of far more pretending works than this of mine, in some form or other, with more or less of fidelity to the truth, and real events, and real motives; while the humbler matters it will be my office to record, will be entirely overlooked by writers who aspire to enrol their names among the Tacituses of former ages. It may be well to say here, however, I shall not attempt the historical mood at all, but content myself with giving the feelings, incidents, and interests of what is purely private life, connecting them no farther with things that are of a more general nature, than is indispensable to render the narrative intelligible and accurate. With these explanations, which are made in order to prevent the person who may happen first to commence the perusal of this manuscript from throwing it into the fire, as a silly attempt to write a more silly fiction, I shall proceed at once to the commencement of my proper task. I was born on the 3d May, 1737, on a neck of land, called Satanstoe, in the county of West Chester, and in the colony of New York; a part of the widely extended empire that then owned the sway of His Sacred Majesty, George II., King of Great Britain, Ireland, and France; Defender of the Faith; and, I may add, the shield and panoply of the Protestant Succession; God bless him! Before I say anything of my parentage, I will first give the reader some idea of the _locus in quo_, and a more precise notion of the spot on which I happened first to see the light. A "neck," in West Chester and Long Island parlance, means something that might be better termed a "head and shoulders," if mere shape and dimensions are kept in view. Peninsula would be the true word, were we describing things on a geographical scale; but, as they are, I find it necessary to adhere to the local term, which is not altogether peculiar to our county, by the way. The "neck" or peninsula of Satanstoe, contains just four hundred and sixty-three acres and a half of excellent West Chester land; and that, when the stone is hauled and laid into wall, is saying as much in its favour as need be said of any soil on earth. It has two miles of beach, and collects a proportionate quantity of sea-weed for manure, besides enjoying near a hundred acres of salt-meadow and sedges, that are not included in the solid ground of the neck proper. As my father, Major Evans Littlepage, was to inherit this estate from his father, Capt. Hugh Littlepage, it might, even at the time of my birth, be considered old family property, it having indeed, been acquired by my grandfather, through his wife, about thirty years after the final cession of the colony to the English by its original Dutch owners. Here we had lived, then, near half a century, when I was born, in the direct line, and considerably longer if we included maternal ancestors; here I now live, at the moment of writing these lines, and here I trust my only son is to live after me. Before I enter into a more minute description of Satanstoe, it may be well, perhaps, to say a word concerning its somewhat peculiar name. The neck lies in the vicinity of a well-known pass that is to be found in the narrow arm of the sea that separates the island of Manhattan from its neighbour, Long Island, and which is called Hell Gate. Now, there is a tradition, that I confess is somewhat confined to the blacks of the neighbourhood, but which says that the Father of Lies, on a particular occasion, when he was violently expelled from certain roystering taverns in the New Netherlands, made his exit by this well-known dangerous pass, and drawing his foot somewhat hastily from among the lobster-pots that abound in those waters, leaving behind him as a print of his passage by that route, the Hog's Back, the Pot, and all the whirlpools and rocks that render navigation so difficult in that celebrated strait, he placed it hurriedly upon the spot where there now spreads a large bay to the southward and eastward of the neck, just touching the latter with the ball of his great toe, as he passed Down-East; from which part of the country some of our people used to maintain he originally came. Some fancied resemblance to an inverted toe (the devil being supposed to turn everything with which he meddles, upside-down,) has been imagined to exist in the shape and swells of our paternal acres; a fact that has probably had its influence in perpetuating the name. Satanstoe has the place been called, therefore, from time immemorial; as time is immemorial in a country in which civilized time commenced not a century and a half ago: and Satanstoe it is called to-day. I confess I am not fond of unnecessary changes, and I sincerely hope this neck of land will continue to go by its old appellation, as long as the House of Hanover shall sit on the throne of these realms; or as long as water shall run and grass shall grow. There has been an attempt made to persuade the neighbourhood, quite lately, that the name is irreligious and unworthy of an enlightened people, like this of West Chester; but it has met with no great success. It has come from a Connecticut man, whose father they say is a clergyman of the "_standing_ order;" so called, I believe, because they stand up at prayers; and who came among us himself in the character of a schoolmaster. This young man, I understand, has endeavoured to persuade the neighbourhood that Satanstoe is a corruption introduced by the Dutch, from Devil's Town; which, in its turn, was a corruption from Dibbleston; the family from which my grandfather's father-in-law purchased having been, as he says, of the name of Dibblee. He has got half-a-dozen of the more sentimental part of our society to call the neck Dibbleton; but the attempt is not likely to succeed in the long run, as we are not a people much given to altering the language, any more than the customs of our ancestors. Besides, my Dutch ancestors did not purchase from any Dibblee, no such family ever owning the place, that being a bold assumption of the Yankee to make out his case the more readily. Satanstoe, as it is little more than a good farm in extent, so it is little more than a particularly good farm in cultivation and embellishment. All the buildings are of stone, even to the hog-sties and sheds, with well-pointed joints, and field walls that would do credit to a fortified place. The house is generally esteemed one of the best in the Colony, with the exception of a few of the new school. It is of only a story and a half in elevation, I admit; but the rooms under the roof are as good as any of that description with which I am acquainted, and their finish is such as would do no discredit to the upper rooms of even a York dwelling. The building is in the shape of an L, or two sides of a parallelogram, one of which shows a front of seventy-five, and the other of fifty feet. Twenty-six feet make the depth, from outside to outside of the walls. The best room had a carpet, that covered two-thirds of the entire dimensions of the floor, even in my boyhood, and there were oil-cloths in most of the better passages. The buffet in the dining-room, or smallest parlour, was particularly admired; and I question if there be, at this hour, a handsomer in the county. The rooms were well-sized, and of fair dimensions, the larger parlours embracing the whole depth of the house, with proportionate widths, while the ceilings were higher than common, being eleven feet, if we except the places occupied by the larger beams of the chamber floors. As there was money in the family, besides the Neck, and the Littlepages had held the king's commissions, my father having once been an ensign, and my grandfather a captain, in the regular army, each in the earlier portion of his life, we always ranked among the gentry of the county. We happened to be in a part of Westchester in which were none of the very large estates, and Satanstoe passed for property of a certain degree of importance. It is true, the Morrises were at Morrisania, and the Felipses, or Philipses, as these Bohemian counts were then called, had a manor on the Hudson, that extended within a dozen miles of us, and a younger branch of the de Lanceys had established itself even much nearer, while the Van Cortlandts, or a branch of them, too, dwelt near Kingsbridge; but these were all people who were at the head of the Colony, and with whom none of the minor gentry attempted to vie. As it was, therefore, the Littlepages held a very respectable position between the higher class of the yeomanry and those who, by their estates, education, connections, official rank, and hereditary consideration, formed what might be justly called the aristocracy of the Colony. Both my father and grandfather had sat in the Assembly, in their time, and, as I have heard elderly people say, with credit, too. As for my father, on one occasion, he made a speech that occupied eleven minutes in the delivery,--a proof that he had something to say, and which was a source of great, but, I trust, humble felicitation in the family, down to the day of his death, and even afterwards. Then the military services of the family stood us in for a great deal, in that day it was something to be an ensign even in the militia, and a far greater thing to have the same rank in a regular regiment. It is true, neither of my predecessors served very long with the King's troops, my father in particular selling out at the end of his second campaign; but the military experience, and I may add the military glory each acquired in youth, did them good service for all the rest of their days. Both were commissioned in the militia, and my father actually rose as high as major in that branch of the service, that being the rank he held, and the title he bore, for the last fifteen years of his life. My mother was of Dutch extraction on both sides, her father having been a Blauvelt, and her mother a Van Busser. I have heard it said that there was even a relationship between the Stuyvesants and the Van Cortlandts, and the Van Bussers; but I am not able to point out the actual degree and precise nature of the affinity. I presume it was not very near, or my information would have been more minute. I have always understood that my mother brought my father thirteen hundred pounds for dowry (currency, not sterling), which, it must be confessed, was a very genteel fortune for a young woman in 1733. Now, I very well know that six, eight, and ten thousand pounds sometimes fall in, in this manner, and even much more in the high families; but no one need be ashamed, who looks back fifty years, and finds that his mother brought a thousand pounds to her husband. I was neither an only child, nor the eldest-born. There was a son who preceded me, and two daughters succeeded, but they all died in infancy, leaving me in effect the only offspring for my parents to cherish and educate. My little brother monopolised the name of Evans, and living for some time after I was christened, I got the Dutch appellation of my maternal grandfather, for my share of the family nomenclature, which happened to be Cornelius--Corny was consequently the diminutive by which I was known to all the whites of my acquaintance, for the first sixteen or eighteen years of my life, and to my parents as long as they lived. Corny Littlepage is not a bad name, in itself, and I trust they who do me the favour to read this manuscript, will lay it down with the feeling that the name is none the worse for the use I have made of it. I have said that both my father and grandfather, each in his day, sat in the assembly; my father twice, and my grandfather only once. Although we lived so near the borough of West Chester, it was not for that place they sat, but for the county, the de Lanceys and the Morrises contending for the control of the borough, in a way that left little chance for the smaller fishes to swim in the troubled water they were so certain to create. Nevertheless, this political elevation brought my father out, as it might be, before the world, and was the means of giving him a personal consideration he might not have otherwise enjoyed. The benefits, and possibly some of the evils of thus being drawn out from the more regular routine of our usually peaceable lives, may be made to appear in the course of this narrative. I have ever considered myself fortunate in not having been born in the earlier and infant days of the colony, when the interests at stake, and the events by which they were influenced, were not of a magnitude to give the mind and the hopes the excitement and enlargement that attend the periods of a more advanced civilization, and of more important incidents. In this respect, my own appearance in this world was most happily timed, as any one will see who will consider the state and importance of the colony in the middle of the present century. New York could not have contained many less than seventy thousand souls, including both colours, at the time of my birth, for it is supposed to contain quite a hundred thousand this day on which I am now writing. In such a community, a man has not only the room, but the materials on which to figure; whereas, as I have often heard him say, my father, when he was born, was one of less than half of the smallest number I have just named. I have been grateful for this advantage, and I trust it will appear, by evidence that will be here afforded, that I have not lived in a quarter of the world, or in an age, when and where, and to which great events have been altogether strangers. My earliest recollections, as a matter of course, are of Satanstoe and the domestic fireside. In my childhood and youth, I heard a great deal said of the Protestant Succession, the House of Hanover, and King George II.; all mixed up with such names as those of George Clinton, Gen. Monckton, Sir Charles Hardy, James de Lancey, and Sir Danvers Osborne, his official representatives in the colony. Every age has its _old_ and its _last_ wars, and I can well remember that which occurred between the French in the Canadas and ourselves, in 1744. I was then seven years old, and it was an event to make an impression on a child of that tender age. My honoured grandfather was then living, as he was long afterwards, and he took a strong interest in the military movements of the period, as was natural for an old soldier. New York had no connection with the celebrated expedition that captured Louisbourg, then the Gibraltar of America, in 1745; but this could not prevent an old soldier like Capt. Littlepage from entering into the affair with all his heart, though forbidden to use his hand. As the reader may not be aware of all the secret springs that set public events in motion, it may be well here to throw in a few words in the way of explanation. There was and is little sympathy, in the way of national feeling, between the colonies of New England and those which lie farther south. We are all loyal, those of the east as well as those of the south-west and south; but there is, and ever has been, so wide a difference in our customs, origins, religious opinions, and histories, as to cause a broad moral line, in the way of feeling, to be drawn between the colony of New York and those that lie east of the Byram river. I have heard it said that most of the emigrants to the New England states came from the west of England where many of their social peculiarities and much of their language are still to be traced, while the colonies farther south have received their population from the more central counties, and those sections of the island that are supposed to be less provincial and peculiar. I do not affirm that such is literally the fact, though it is well known that we of New York have long been accustomed to regard our neighbours of New England as very different from ourselves, whilst, I dare say, our neighbours of New England have regarded us as different from themselves, and insomuch removed from perfection. Let all this be as it may, it is certain New England is a portion of the empire that is set apart from the rest, for good or for evil. It got its name from the circumstance that the English possessions were met, on its western boundary by those of the Dutch, who were thus separated from the other colonies of purely Anglo-Saxon origin, by a wide district that was much larger in surface than the mother country itself. I am afraid there is something in the character of these Anglo-Saxons that predisposes them to laugh and turn up their noses at other races; for I have remarked that their natives of the parent land itself, who come among us, show this disposition even as it respects us of New York and those of New England, while the people of the latter region manifest a feeling towards us, their neighbours, that partakes of anything but the humility that is thought to grace that Christian character to which they are particularly fond of laying claim. My grandfather was a native of the old country, however, and he entered but little into the colonial jealousies. He had lived from boyhood, and had married in New York, and was not apt to betray any of the overweening notions of superiority that we sometimes encountered in native-born Englishmen, though I can remember instances in which he would point out the defects in our civilization, and others in which he dwelt with pleasure on the grandeur and power his own island. I dare say this was all right, for few among us have ever been disposed to dispute the just supremacy of England in all things that are desirable, and which form the basis of human excellence. I well remember a journey Capt. Hugh Littlepage made to Boston, in 1745, in order to look at the preparations that were making for the great expedition. Although his own colony had no connection with this enterprise, in a military point of view, his previous service rendered him an object of interest to the military men then assembled along the coast of New England. It has been said the expedition against Louisbourg, then the strongest place in America, was planned by a lawyer, led by a merchant, and executed by husbandmen and mechanics; but this, though true as a whole, was a rule that had its exceptions. There were many old soldiers who had seen the service of this continent in the previous wars, and among them were several of my grandfather's former acquaintances. With these he passed many a cheerful hour, previously to the day of sailing, and I have often thought since, that my presence alone prevented him from making one in the fleet. The reader will think, I was young, perhaps, to be so far from home on such an occasion, but it happened in this wise: My excellent mother thought I had come out of the small-pox with some symptoms that might be benefited by a journey, and she prevailed on her father-in-law to let me be of the party when he left home to visit Boston in the winter of 1744-5. At that early day moving about was not always convenient in these colonies, and my grandfather travelling in a sleigh that was proceeding east with some private stores that had been collected for the expedition, it presented a favourable opportunity to send me along with my venerable progenitor, who very good-naturedly consented to let me commence my travels under his own immediate auspices. The things I saw on this occasion have had a material influence on my future life. I got a love of adventure, and particularly of military parade and grandeur, that has since led me into more than one difficulty. Capt. Hugh Littlepage, my grandfather, was delighted with all he saw until after the expedition had sailed, when he began to grumble on the subject of the religious observances that the piety of the Puritans blended with most of their other movements. On the score of religion there was a marked difference; I may say there _is_ still a marked difference between New England and New York. The people of New England certainly did, and possibly may still, look upon us of New York as little better than heathens; while we of New York assuredly did, and for anything I know to the contrary may yet, regard them as canters, and by necessary connection, hypocrites. I shall not take it on myself to say which party is right; though it has often occurred to my mind that it would be better had New England a little less self-righteousness, and New York a little more righteousness, without the self. Still, in the way of pounds, shillings and pence, we will not turn our backs upon them any day, being on the whole rather the most trustworthy of the two as respects money; more especially in all such cases in which our neighbour's goods can be appropriated without having recourse to absolutely direct means. Such, at any rate, is the New York opinion, let them think as they please about it on the other side of Byram. My grandfather met an old fellow-campaigner, at Boston, of the name of Hight, Major Hight, as he was called, who had come to see the preparations, too; and the old soldiers passed most of the time together. The Major was a Jerseyman, and had been somewhat of a free-liver in his time, retaining some of the propensities of his youth in old age, as is apt to be the case with those who cultivate a vice as if it were a hot-house plant. The Major was fond of his bottle, drinking heavily of Madeira, of which there was then a good stock in Boston, for he brought some on himself; and I can remember various scenes that occurred between him and my grandfather, after dinner, as they sat discoursing in the tavern on the progress of things, and the prospects for the future. Had these two old soldiers been of the troops of the province in which they were, it would have been "Major" and "Captain" at every breath; for no part of the earth is fonder of titles than our eastern brethren; [1] whereas, I must think we had some claims to more true simplicity of character and habits, notwithstanding New York has ever been thought the most aristocratical of all the northern colonies. Having been intimate from early youth, my two old soldiers familiarly called each other Joey and Hodge, the latter being the abbreviation of one of my grandfather's names, Roger, when plain Hugh was not used, as sometimes happened between them. Hugh Roger Littlepage, I ought to have said, was my grandfather's name. "I should like these Yankees better, if they prayed less, my old friend," said the Major, one day, after they had been discussing the appearances of things, and speaking between the puffs of his pipe. "I can see no great use in losing so much time, by making these halts to pray, when the campaign is fairly opened." "It was always their way, Joey," my grandfather answered, taking his time, as is customary with smokers. "I remember when we were out together, in the year '17, that the New England troops always had their parsons, who acted as a sort of second colonels. They tell me His Excellency has ordered a weekly fast, for public prayers, during the whole of this campaign." "Ay, Master Hodge, praying and plundering; so they go on," returned the Major, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, preparatory to filling it anew; an employment that gave him an opportunity to give vent to his feelings, without pausing to puff.--"Ay, Master Hodge, praying and plundering; so they go on. Now, do you remember old Watson, who was in the Massachusetts Levies, in the year '12?--old Tom Watson; he that was a sub under Barnwell, in our Tuscarora expedition?" My grandfather nodded his head in assent, that being the only reply the avocation of smoking rendered convenient, just at that moment, unless a sort of affirmatory grunt could be construed into an auxiliary. "Well, he has a son going in this affair; and old Tom, or Colonel Watson, as he is now very particular to be called, is down here with his wife and two daughters, to see the ensign off. I went to pay the old fellow a visit, Hodge; and found him, and the mother and sisters, all as busy as bees in getting young Tom's baggage ready for a march. There lay his whole equipment before my eyes, and I had a favourable occasion to examine it at my leisure." "Which you did with all your might, or you're not the Joe Hight of the year '10," said my grandfather, taking his turn with the ashes and the tobacco-box. Old Hight was now puffing away like a blacksmith who is striving to obtain a white heat, and it was some time before he could get out the proper reply to this half-assertion, half-interrogatory sort of remark. "You may be sure of that," he at length ejaculated; when, certain of his light, he proceeded to tell the whole story, stopping occasionally to puff, lest he should lose the "vantage ground" he had just obtained. "What d'ye think of half-a-dozen strings of red onions, for one item in a subaltern's stores!" My grandfather grunted again, in a way that might very well pass for a laugh. "You're certain they were red, Joey?" he finally asked. "As red as his regimentals. Then there was a jug, filled with molasses, that is as big as yonder demijohn;" glancing at the vessel which contained his own private stores. "But I should have thought nothing of these, a large empty sack attracting much of my attention. I could not imagine what young Tom could want of such a sack; but, on broaching the subject to the Major, he very frankly gave me to understand that Louisbourg was thought to be a rich town, and there was no telling what luck, or Providence--yes, by George!--he called it _Providence!_--might throw in his son Tommy's way. Now that the sack was empty, and had an easy time of it, the girls would put his bible and hymn-book in it, as a place where the young man would be likely to look for them. I dare say, Hodge, you never had either bible or hymn-book, in any of your numerous campaigns?" "No, nor a plunder-sack, nor a molasses-jug, nor strings of red onions," growled my grandfather in reply. How well I remember that evening! A vast deal of colonial prejudice and neighbourly antipathy made themselves apparent in the conversation of the two veterans; who seemed to entertain a strange sort of contemptuous respect for their fellow-subjects of New England; who, in their turn, I make not the smallest doubt, paid them off in kind--with all the superciliousness and reproach, and with many grains less of the respect. That night, Major Hight and Capt. Hugh Roger Littlepage, both got a little how-come-you-so, drinking bumpers to the success of what they called "the Yankee expedition," even at the moment they were indulging in constant side hits at the failings and habits of the people. These marks of neighbourly infirmity are not peculiar to the people of the adjacent provinces of New York and of New England. I have often remarked that the English think and talk very much of the French, as the Yankees speak of us; while the French, so far as I have been able to understand their somewhat unintelligible language--which seems never to have a beginning nor an end--treat the English as the Puritans of the Old World. As I have already intimated, we were not very remarkable for religion in New York, in my younger days; while it would be just the word, were I to say that religion was _conspicuous_ among our eastern neighbours. I remember to have heard my grandfather say, he was once acquainted with a Col. Heathcote, an Englishman, like himself, by birth, and a brother of a certain Sir Gilbert Heathcote, who was formerly a leading man in the Bank of England. This Col. Heathcote came among us young, and married here, leaving his posterity behind him, and was lord of the manor of Scarsdale and Mamaroneck, in our county of West Chester. Well, this Col. Heathcote told my grandfather, speaking on the subject of religion, that he had been much shocked, on arriving in this country, at discovering the neglected condition of religion in the colony; more especially on Long Island, where the people lived in a sort of heathenish condition. Being a man of mark, and connected with the government, The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, applied to him to aid it in spreading the truths of the bible in the colony. The Colonel was glad enough to comply; and I remember my grandfather said, his friend told him of the answer he returned to these good persons in England. "I was so struck with the heathenish condition of the people, on my arriving here," he wrote to them, "that, commanding the militia of the colony, I ordered the captains of the different companies to call their men together, each Sunday at sunrise, and to drill them until sunset; unless they would consent to repair to some convenient place, and listen to morning and evening prayer, and to two wholesome sermons read by some suitable person, in which case the men were to be excused from drill." [2] I do not think this would be found necessary in New England at least, where many of the people would be likely to prefer drilling to preaching. But all this gossip about the moral condition of the adjacent colonies of New York and New England is leading me from the narrative, and does not promise much for the connection and interest of the remainder of the manuscript. [Footnote 1: It will be remembered Mr. Littlepage wrote more than seventy years ago, when this distinction might exclusively belong to the _East_; but the _West_ has now some claim to it, also.] [Footnote 2: On the subject of this story, the editor can say he has seen a published letter from Col. Heathcote, who died more than a century since, at Mamaroneck, West Chester Co., in which that gentleman gives the Society for the propagation of the gospel an account of his proceedings, that agrees almost _verbatim_ with the account of the matter that is here given by Mr. Cornelius Littlepage. The house in which Col. Heathcote dwelt was destroyed by fire, a short time before the revolution; but the property on which it stood, and the present building, belong at this moment to his great-grandson, the Rt. Rev. Wm. _Heathcote_ de Lancey, the Bishop of Western New York. On the subject of the _plunder_, the editor will remark, that a near connection, whose grandfather was a Major at the taking of Louisbourg, and who was subsequently one of the first Brigadiers appointed in 1775, has lately shown him a letter written to that officer, during the expedition, by _his_ father; in which, blended with a great deal of pious counsel, and some really excellent religious exhortation, is an earnest inquiry after the _plunder_.--EDITOR.] _ |
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