 | II. Edwin Brothertoft |  |
2. II.
Bluff is the bow and round as a pumpkin
is the stern of the Dutch brig, swinging to its
anchor in the bay of New York. It is the new
arrival from England, this sweet autumn day of
1665. The passengers land. Colonel Brothertoft
and family! Welcome, chivalric gentleman,
to this raw country! You and your class are
needed here.
And now disembark a great company of
Lincolnshire men, old tenants or old soldiers of
the Colonel's. Their names are thorough Lincolnshire.
Here come Wrangles, Swinesheads,
Timberlands, Mumbys, Bilsbys, Hogsthorpes,
Swillingores, and Galsworthys, old and young,
men and women.
These land, and stare about forlornly, after
the manner of emigrants. They sit on their
boxes, and wish they were well back in the old
country. They see the town gallows, an eminent
object on the beach, and are taught that
where man goes, crime goes also. A frowzy
Indian paddles ashore with clams to sell; at
their sinciputs. A sly Dutchman, the fatter prototype
of to-day's emigrant runner, stands before
them and says, seductively, “Bier, Schnapps!”
They shake their heads firmly, and respond,
“Nix!”
Colonel Brothertoft was received with due distinction
by Governor Nicolls and Mayor Willet.
Old Peter Stuyvesant was almost consoled that
Hollanders were sent to their Bouweries to smoke
and grow stolid, if such men as this new-comer
were to succeed them in power.
The Colonel explored that “great brave river”
which Connecticut Winthrop had celebrated in
his letter. Its beautiful valley was “all before
him where to choose.” Dutch land-patents were
plenteous in market as villa sites after a modern
panic. Crown grants were to be had from the
new proprietary, almost for the asking.
The lord of old Brothertoft Manor selected his
square leagues for the new Manor of Brothertoft
at the upper end of Westchester County, bordering
upon the Highlands of the Hudson. A few
pioneer Dutchmen — De Witts, Van Warts, and
Canadys — were already colonized there. His
Lincolnshire followers soon found their places;
but they came from the fens, and did not love
the hills, and most of them in time dispersed to
flatter country.
The new proprietor's wealth was considerable
for America. He somewhat diminished it by
reproducing, as well as colonial workmen could
do, that corner of the old manor-house untouched
by the fire. It grew up a strange exotic, this
fine mansion, in the beautiful wilderness. The
“curious fabrick” of little imported bricks, with
its peaked turret, its quaint gables, its square
bay-window, and grand porch, showed incongruously
at first, among the stumps of a clearing.
And there the exiled gentleman tried to live
an exotic life. He bestowed about him the furniture
of old Brothertoft Manor. He hung his
Vandyck on the wall. He laid his presentation
copy of Mr. John Milton's new poem, Paradise
Lost, on the table.
But the vigor and dash of the Colonel's youth
were gone. His heart was sick for the failure
of liberty at home. The rough commonplace of
pioneering wearied him. He had done his last
work in life when he uprooted from England, and
transferred his race to flourish or wither on the
new soil. He had formed the family character;
he had set the shining example. Let his son
sustain the honor of the name!
The founder of Brothertoft Manor died, and a
second Edwin, the young Astyanax of Vandyck's
picture, became the Patroon.
A third Edwin succeeded him, a fourth followed,
was born. He was an only child, like each of
his forefathers. These pages chronicle his great
joy and his great sorrow, and how he bore himself
at a crisis of his individual life. Whoever
runs may read stories like his in the broad light
of to-day. This one withdraws itself into the
chiaroscuro of a recent past.
The Brothertoft fortunes did not wax on the
new continent. Each gentle Edwin transmitted
to his heir the Manor docked of a few more
square miles, the mansion a little more dilapidated,
the furniture more worn and broken, the
name a little less significant in the pushing world
of the Province.
But each Edwin, with the sword and portrait
of the first American, handed down the still more
precious heirlooms of the family, — honor unblemished,
quick sympathies, a tender heart, a
generous hand, refinement, courtesy, — in short,
all the qualities of mind and person that go “to
grace a gentleman.”
It became the office of each to be the type
gentleman of his time.
Perhaps that was enough. Perhaps they were
purposely isolated from other offices. Nature
takes no small pains to turn out her type blackguard
a complete model of ignobility, and makes
it his exclusive business to be himself. Why
order?
The Brothertofts always married women like
themselves, the female counterparts of their mild
manhood. Each wife blended with her husband.
No new elements of character appeared in the
only child. Not one of them was a father vigorous
enough to found a sturdy clan with broad
shoulders and stiff wills, ordained to success
from the cradle.
They never held their own in the world, much
less took what was another's. Each was conscious
of a certain latent force, and left it latent.
They lived weakly, and died young, like fair
exotics. They were a mild, inefficient, ineffectual,
lovely, decaying race, strong in all the
charming qualities, feeble in all the robust ones.
And now let the procession of ancestors fade
away into shadows; and let the last shadow
lead forth the hero of this history in his proper
substance!
| II. Edwin Brothertoft | |