Authors: James Fenimore Cooper
We had orchards, meadows, and ploughed fields all around us; while the
barns, granaries, styes, and other buildings of the farm, were of
solid stone, like the dwelling, and all in capital condition. In
addition to the place, which he inherited from my grandfather, quite
without any encumbrance, well stocked and supplied with utensils of
all sorts, my father had managed to bring with him from sea some
fourteen or fifteen thousand dollars, which he carefully invested in
mortgages in the county. He got twenty-seven hundred pounds currency
with my mother, similarly bestowed; and, two or three great landed
proprietors, and as many retired merchants from York, excepted,
Captain Wallingford was generally supposed to be one of the stiffest
men in Ulster county. I do not know exactly how true was this report;
though I never saw anything but the abundance of a better sort of
American farm under the paternal roof, and I know that the poor were
never sent away empty-handed. It as true that our wine was made of
currants; but it was delicious, and there was always a sufficient
stock in the cellar to enable us to drink it three or four years
old. My father, however, had a small private collection of his own,
out of which he would occasionally produce a bottle; and I remember to
have heard Governor George Clinton, afterwards, Vice President, who
was an Ulster county man, and who sometimes stopped at Clawbonny in
passing, say that it was excellent East India Madeira. As for clarets,
burgundy, hock and champagne, they were wines then unknown in America,
except on the tables of some of the principal merchants, and, here and
there, on that of some travelled gentleman of an estate larger than
common. When I say that Governor George Clinton used to stop
occasionally, and taste my father's Madeira, I do not wish to boast of
being classed with those who then composed the gentry of the state. To
this, in that day, we could hardly aspire, though the substantial
hereditary property of my family gave us a local consideration that
placed us a good deal above the station of ordinary yeomen. Had we
lived in one of the large towns, our association would unquestionably
have been with those who are usually considered to be one or two
degrees beneath the highest class. These distinctions were much more
marked, immediately after the war of the revolution, than they are
to-day; and they are more marked to-day, even, than all but the most
lucky, or the most meritorious, whichever fortune dignifies, are
willing to allow.
The courtship between my parents occurred while my father was at home,
to be cured of the wounds he had received in the engagement between
the Trumbull and the Watt. I have always supposed this was the moving
cause why my mother fancied that the grim-looking scar on the left
side of my father's face was so particularly becoming. The battle was
fought in June 1780, and my parents were married in the autumn of the
same year. My father did not go to sea again until after my birth,
which took place the very day that Cornwallis capitulated at
Yorktown. These combined events set the young sailor in motion, for he
felt he had a family to provide for, and he wished to make one more
mark on the enemy in return for the beauty-spot his wife so gloried
in. He accordingly got a commission in a privateer, made two or three
fortunate cruises, and was able at the peace to purchase a prize-brig,
which he sailed, as master and owner, until the year 1790, when he was
recalled to the paternal roof by the death of my grandfather. Being
an only son, the captain, as my father was uniformly called, inherited
the land, stock, utensils and crops, as already mentioned; while the
six thousand pounds currency that were "at use," went to my two aunts,
who were thought to be well married, to men in their own class of
life, in adjacent counties.
My father never went to sea after he inherited Clawbonny. From that
time down to the day of his death, he remained on his farm, with the
exception of a single winter passed in Albany as one of the
representatives of the county. In his day, it was a credit to a man
to represent a county, and to hold office under the State; though the
abuse of the elective principle, not to say of the appointing power,
has since brought about so great a change. Then, a member of congress
was
somebody
; now, he is only—a member of congress.
We were but two surviving children, three of the family dying infants,
leaving only my sister Grace and myself to console our mother in her
widowhood. The dire accident which placed her in this, the saddest of
all conditions for a woman who had been a happy wife, occurred in the
year 1794, when I was in my thirteenth year, and Grace was turned of
eleven. It may be well to relate the particulars.
There was a mill, just where the stream that runs through our valley
tumbles down to a level below that on which the farm lies, and empties
itself into a small tributary of the Hudson. This mill was on our
property, and was a source of great convenience and of some profit to
my father. There he ground all the grain that was consumed for
domestic purposes, for several miles around; and the tolls enabled him
to fatten his porkers and beeves, in a way to give both a sort of
established character. In a word, the mill was the concentrating point
for all the products of the farm, there being a little landing on the
margin of the creek that put up from the Hudson, whence a sloop sailed
weekly for town. My father passed half his time about the mill and
landing, superintending his workmen, and particularly giving
directions about the fitting of the sloop, which was his property
also, and about the gear of the mill. He was clever, certainly, and
had made several useful suggestions to the millwright who occasionally
came to examine and repair the works; but he was by no means so
accurate a mechanic as he fancied himself to be. He had invented some
new mode of arresting the movement, and of setting the machinery in
motion when necessary; what it was, I never knew, for it was not named
at Clawbonny after the fatal accident occurred. One day, however, in
order to convince the millwright of the excellence of this
improvement, my father caused the machinery to be stopped, and then
placed his own weight upon the large wheel, in order to manifest the
sense he felt in the security of his invention. He was in the very act
of laughing exultingly at the manner in which the millwright shook his
head at the risk he ran, when the arresting power lost its control of
the machinery, the heavy head of water burst into the buckets, and the
wheel whirled round carrying my unfortunate father with it. I was an
eye-witness of the whole, and saw the face of my parent, as the wheel
turned it from me, still expanded in mirth. There was but one
revolution made, when the wright succeeded in stopping the works. This
brought the great wheel back nearly to its original position, and I
fairly shouted with hysterical delight when I saw my father standing
in his tracks, as it might be, seemingly unhurt. Unhurt he would have
been, though he must have passed a fearful keel-hauling, but for one
circumstance. He had held on to the wheel with the tenacity of a
seaman, since letting go his hold would have thrown him down a cliff
of near a hundred feet in depth, and he actually passed between the
wheel and the planking beneath it unharmed, although there was only an
inch or two to spare; but in rising from this fearful strait, his head
had been driven between a projecting beam and one of the buckets, in a
way to crush one temple in upon the brain. So swift and sudden had
been the whole thing, that, on turning the wheel, his lifeless body
was still inclining on its periphery, retained erect, I believe, in
consequence of some part of his coat getting attached, to the head of
a nail. This was the first serious sorrow of my life. I had always
regarded my father as one of the fixtures of the world; as a part of
the great system of the universe; and had never contemplated his death
as a possible thing. That another revolution might occur, and carry
the country back under the dominion of the British crown, would have
seemed to me far more possible than that my father could die. Bitter
truth now convinced me of the fallacy of such notions.
It was months and months before I ceased to dream of this frightful
scene. At my age, all the feelings were fresh and plastic, and grief
took strong hold of my heart. Grace and I used to look at each other
without speaking, long after the event, the tears starting to my eyes,
and rolling down her cheeks, our emotions being the only
communications between us, but communications that no uttered words
could have made so plain. Even now, I allude to my mother's anguish
with trembling. She was sent for to the house of the miller, where the
body lay, and arrived unapprised of the extent of the evil. Never can
I—never shall I forget the outbreakings of her sorrow, when she
learned the whole of the dreadful truth. She was in fainting fits for
hours, one succeeding another, and then her grief found tongue. There
was no term of endearment that the heart of woman could dictate to her
speech, that was not lavished on the lifeless clay. She called the
dead "her Miles," "her beloved Miles," "her husband," "her own darling
husband," and by such other endearing epithets. Once she seemed as if
resolute to arouse the sleeper from his endless trance, and she said,
solemnly, "
Father
—dear,
dearest
father!" appealing as
it might be to the parent of her children, the tenderest and most
comprehensive of all woman's terms of endearment—"Father—dear,
dearest father! open your eyes and look upon your babes—your precious
girl, and noble boy! Do not thus shut out their sight for ever!"
But it was in vain. There lay the lifeless corpse, as insensible as if
the spirit of God had never had a dwelling within it. The principal
injury had been received on that much-prized scar; and again and again
did my poor mother kiss both, as if her caresses might yet restore her
husband to life. All would not do. The same evening, the body was
carried to the dwelling, and three days later it was laid in the
church-yard, by the side of three generations of forefathers, at a
distance of only a mile from Clawbonny. That funeral service, too,
made a deep impression on my memory. We had some Church of England
people in the valley; and old Miles Wallingford, the first of the
name, a substantial English franklin, had been influenced in his
choice of a purchase by the fact that one of Queen Anne's churches
stood so near the farm. To that little church, a tiny edifice of
stone, with a high, pointed roof, without steeple, bell, or
vestry-room, had three generations of us been taken to be christened,
and three, including my father, had been taken to be buried.
Excellent, kind-hearted, just-minded Mr. Hardinge read the funeral
service over the man whom his own father had, in the same humble
edifice, christened. Our neighbourhood has much altered of late
years; but, then, few higher than mere labourers dwelt among us, who
had not some sort of hereditary claim to be beloved. So it was with
our clergyman, whose father had been his predecessor, having actually
married my grand-parents. The son had united my father and mother,
and now he was called on to officiate at the funeral obsequies of the
first. Grace and I sobbed as if our hearts would break, the whole
time we were in the church; and my poor, sensitive, nervous little
sister actually shrieked as she heard the sound of the first clod that
fell upon the coffin. Our mother was spared that trying scene, finding
it impossible to support it. She remained at home, on her knees, most
of the day on which the funeral occurred.
Time soothed our sorrows, though my mother, a woman of more than
common sensibility, or, it were better to say of uncommon affections,
never entirely recovered from the effects of her irreparable loss. She
had loved too well, too devotedly, too engrossingly, ever to think of
a second marriage, and lived only to care for the interests of Miles
Wallingford's children. I firmly believe we were more beloved because
we stood in this relation to the deceased, than because we were her
own natural offspring. Her health became gradually undermined, and,
three years after the accident of the mill, Mr. Hardinge laid her at
my father's side. I was now sixteen, and can better describe what
passed during the last days of her existence, than what took place at
the death of her husband. Grace and I were apprised of what was so
likely to occur, quite a month before the fatal moment arrived; and we
were not so much overwhelmed with sudden grief as we had been on the
first great occasion of family sorrow, though we both felt our loss
keenly, and my sister, I think I may almost say, inextinguishably. Mr.
Hardinge had us both brought to the bed-side, to listen to the parting
advice of our dying parent, and to be impressed with a scene that is
always healthful, if rightly improved. "You baptized these two dear
children, good Mr. Hardinge," she said, in a voice that was already
enfeebled by physical decay, "and you signed them with the sign of the
cross, in token of Christ's death for them; and I now ask of your
friendship and pastoral care to see that they are not neglected at the
most critical period of their lives—that when impressions are the
deepest, and yet the most easily made. God will reward all your
kindness to the orphan children of your friends." The excellent
divine, a man who lived more for others than for himself, made the
required promises, and the soul of my mother took its flight in peace.
Neither my sister nor myself grieved as deeply for the loss of this
last of our parents, as we did for that of the first. We had both
seen so many instances of her devout goodness, had been witnesses of
so great a triumph of her faith as to feel an intimate, though silent,
persuasion that her death was merely a passage to a better state of
existence—that it seemed selfish to regret. Still, we wept and
mourned, even while, in one sense, I think we rejoiced. She was
relieved from, much bodily suffering, and I remember, when I went to
take a last look at her beloved face, that I gazed on its calm
serenity with a feeling akin to exultation, as I recollected that pain
could no longer exercise dominion over her frame, and that her spirit
was then dwelling in bliss. Bitter regrets came later, it is true,
and these were fully shared—nay, more than shared—by Grace.