Littlepage Manuscripts: Satanstoe, The Chainbearer & The Redskins (Complete Edition). James Fenimore Cooper
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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.
Chapter II
“I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty;
or that youth would sleep out the rest.”
—Winter’s Tale
It is not necessary for me to say much of the first fourteen years of my life. They passed like the childhood and youth of the sons of most gentlemen in our colony, at that day, with this distinction, however. There was a class among us which educated its boys at home. This was not a very numerous class, certainly, nor was it always the highest in point of fortune and rank. Many of the large proprietors were of Dutch origin, as a matter of course; and these seldom, if ever, sent their children to England to be taught anything, in my boyhood. I understand that a few are getting over their ancient prejudices, in this particular, and begin to fancy Oxford or Cambridge may be quite as learned schools as that of Leyden; but, no Van, in my boyhood, could have been made to believe this. Many of the Dutch proprietors gave their children very little education, in any way or form, though most of them imparted lessons of probity that were quite as useful as learning, had the two things been really inseparable. For my part, while I admit there is a great deal of knowledge going up and down the land, that is just of the degree to trick a fellow-creature out of his rights, I shall never subscribe to the opinion, which is so prevalent among the Dutch portion of our population, and which holds the doctrine that the schools of the New England provinces are the reason the descendants of the Puritans do not enjoy the best of reputations, in this respect. I believe a boy may be well taught, and made all the honester for it; though, I admit, there may be, and is, such a thing as training a lad in false notions, as well as training him in those that are true. But, we had a class, principally of English extraction, that educated its sons well; usually sending them home, to the great English schools, and finishing at the universities. These persons, however, lived principally in town, or, having estates on the Hudson, passed their winters there. To this class the Littlepages did not belong; neither their habits nor their fortunes tempting them to so high a flight. For myself, I was taught enough Latin and Greek to enter college, by the Rev. Thomas Worden, an English divine, who was rector of St. Jude’s, the parish to which our family properly belonged. This gentleman was esteemed a good scholar, and was very popular among the gentry of the county; attending all the dinners, clubs, races, balls, and other diversions that were given by them, within ten miles of his residence. His sermons were pithy and short; and he always spoke of your half-hour preachers, as illiterate prosers, who did not understand how to condense their thoughts. Twenty minutes were his gauge, though I remember to have heard my father say, he had known him preach all of twenty-two. When he compressed down to fourteen, my grandfather invariably protested he was delightful.
I remained with Mr. Worden until I could translate the two first AEneids, and the whole of the Gospel of St. Matthew, pretty readily; and then my father and grandfather, the last in particular, for the old gentleman had a great idea of learning, began to turn over in their minds, the subject of the college to which I ought to be sent. We had the choice of two, in both of which the learned languages and the sciences are taught, to a degree, and in a perfection, that is surprising for a new country. These colleges are Yale, at New Haven, in Connecticut, and Nassau Hall, which was then at Newark, New Jersey, after having been a short time at Elizabethtown, but which has since been established at Princeton. Mr. Worden laughed at both; said that neither had as much learning as a second-rate English grammar-school; and that a lower-form boy, at Eton or Westminster, could take a master’s degree at either, and pass for a prodigy in the bargain. My father, who was born in the colonies, and had a good deal of the right colony feeling, was nettled at this, I remember; while my grandfather, being old-country born, but colony educated, was at a loss how to view the matter. The captain had a great respect for his native land, and evidently considered it the paradise of this earth, though his recollections of it were not very distinct; but, at the same time, he loved Old York, and West Chester in particular, where he had married and established himself at Satan’s Toe; or, as he spelt it, and as we all have spelt it, now, this many a day, Satanstoe. I was present at the conversation which decided the question, as regarded my future education, and which took place in the common parlour, around a blazing fire, about a week before Christmas, the year I was fourteen. There were present Capt. Hugh Roger, Major Evans, my mother, the Rev. Mr. Worden, and an old gentleman of Dutch designation and extraction, of the name of Abraham Van Valkenburgh, but who was familiarly called, by his friends, ‘Brom Follock, or Col. Follock or Volleck, as the last happen to be more or less ceremonious, or more or less Dutch. Follock, I think, however was the favourite pronunciation. This Col. Van Valkenburgh was an old brother-soldier of my father’s, and, indeed, a relation, a sort of a cousin through my greatgrandmother, besides being a man of much consideration and substance. He lived in Rockland, just across the Hudson, but never failed to pay a visit to Satanstoe at that season of the year. On the present occasion, he was accompanied by his son, Dirck, who was my friend, and just a year my junior.
“Vell, den,”—the colonel commenced the discourse by saying, as he tapped the ashes out of his pipe for the second time that evening, having first taken a draught of hot flip, a beverage much in vogue then, as well as now,—“vell, den, Evans, vat is your intention as to ter poy? Vill he pe college-l’arnt, like as his grant-fat’er, or only school-l’arnt, like as his own fat’er?” The allusion to the grandfather being a pleasantry of the colonel’s, who insisted that all the old-country born were “college-l’arnt” by instinct.
“To own the truth, ‘Brom,” my father answered, “this is a point that is not yet entirely settled, for there are different opinions as to the place to which he shall be sent, even admitting that he is to be sent at all.”
The colonel fastened his full, projecting, blue eyes on my father, in a way that pretty plainly expressed surprise.
“Vat, den, is dere so many colleges, dat it is hart to choose?” he said.
“There are but two that can be of any use to us, for Cambridge is much too distant to think of sending the boy so far. Cambridge was in our thoughts at one time, but that is given up.”
“Vhere, den, ist Camprige?” demanded the Dutchman, removing his pipe to ask so important a question, a ceremony he usually thought unnecessary.
“It is a New England college—near Boston; not half a day’s