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Memoirs of Julian Burroughs
Julian Burroughs, son of the naturalist John Burroughs, was the
superintendent of the Payne estate from 1913 through early 1918.
Chapter X
In 1909 a New York man, Col. Oliver Hazard Payne, bought an estate
near us and began to build a big mansion. He had a fine three hundred and
fifty foot steam yacht, the old style of a millionaire's boat: white hull, clipper
bow, three masts, and a big buff stack. The place he bought had almost a mile
of riverfront so he could come up the Hudson from New York and anchor out
in front of his new home. The first time they came up here the crew felt they
were surely up in the woods so they were surprised when the anchor chain
kept running out almost as though there was no bottom.
Of course, I had to look her over, the
beautiful Aphrodite, so I rowed about her in my duck
boat and narrowly missed an accident. I was
keeping well off so I could look up at her rail and
superstructure and just missed the little boat they
had out on the end of a boom. It was so close!
Most of the local people got work on the place or construction and it
became known as "the big job." Henry Ackert, who used to fish with me, was
a night watchman but often would not show up so his father had to stay on for
him. Well, we were having a most unusual period of iceboating and Henry, of
course, had built a small boat and was having the time of his life with it, so he
wasn't always at his work as night watchman. His father, the patient, hard-
working Gill, would take his place, after working all day at his own job.
The iceboating that had been so thrilling and such a feature of this part
of the Hudson was on its way out. The wealthy people across the river, the
Roosevelts and Rogers and others, had gorgeous iceboats, shining butternut
or basswood frames and snowy white sails. There was a story that Rogers
was paying a native three dollars a day to search the woods for a big sound
butternut for the backbone, running plane, for an iceboat. Many young fellows
and even boys built a small one. I compromised by making a skate sail and
even with this I was often swept off my feel and slammed down on the ice.
It was at this time that an event occurred that was to make a great
difference in our lives. Glenn Buck of Chicago introduced Father to Henry
Ford and Mr. Ford gave Father a car, a real live Model T which Father and I
set about to learn to run.
One winter morning in 1913 when I opened my mail I found a letter
from Miss Larson, who ran Col. Payne's establishment, there being no Mrs.
Payne, and she asked me if I would become the superintendent for their place
here at West Park. That was such a surprise that it almost gave me a shock.
Since the girl we had helping us was a native related to people who worked at
Col. Payne's, the story soon got around and it gave the people here almost as
much of a shock as it had me. Many men were trying for that job and it was a
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bitter disappointment to them. The natives were stunned. They suddenly saw
me in a different light.
The Colonel had been treasurer of the old Standard Oil and father of
American Tobacco and no one knew, except his lawyers, how much money,
how many millions, he really had. There was a rumor, that for quite a good
many reasons I believe is more or less true, that he turned over to his heirs a
part of his wealth to avoid inheritance taxes.
So I was asked to call on the Colonel at his home on Fifth Avenue in
New York so he could look me over. I realized I was green and inexperienced,
yet I passed. I remember it all so well: the English butler, whom I already
knew, came to the door and took me in to the library where the Colonel was
reading his morning paper. A slightly built gentleman, an aristocrat of the blue
blood with the domed head of a financier and an eye that looked right through
you. The Colonel's mother was a Belmont and he was not only a son of
Senator Payne of Ohio but he was a direct descendent of Admiral Perry of the
battle of Lake Eric fame. He came to the door with me and was the perfect
gentleman, gracious and courteous.
Next I had to be installed al the beautiful, wonderful estate here and we
moved up to the superintendent's house, once the home of Col. Pratt. Of
course, everyone hated me, that is, those who were at the heads of
departments and who had made their own plans: the gardener and florist, the
chief engineer, the dairyman, and so on. I resolved that I'd carry on smoothly
and never fire anyone for any personal reason. As Miss Larson told a friend,
and it got back to me, I had everybody against me.
One of the dangers in such a situation is that there are those who in
turn hate the foreman or heads of departments and would run to me with any
story that they could get me to listen to and I was far too prone to listen. I
often think that though at Col. Payne's we had about as near an earthly
paradise as it is possible to get there was no end to jealousies and hatreds
and general meanness.
The Colonel, through Miss Larson, was like a father to us all. We had
everything from free milk, chickens, eggs, vegetables, telephone, much use of
the car and so on to always a generous Christmas present; so no wonder
there were many who wanted my job.
The Colonel was here in the summer with a household of servants. In
the fall, part of them went to the Fifth Avenue house and later, toward
Christmas, on down to Col. Payne's house at Thomasville, Georgia, returning
to New York in the spring and later up here. Miss Larson had charge of
everything and everyone, and a strict, yet kindhearted and generous
disciplinarian she was. Before going south the Colonel would give me sixty or
seventy thousand dollars to run the place while they were away and one
winter I know I ran short and had to write for more.
All my life I have been associated with artists, architects, writers and so
on and I find that they are mostly a jealous, selfish crowd. That is, rather more
so than the average run of humanity. I remember that some one told Father,
when he criticized W. J. Long for his nature faking, that Long said, "Oh he's
just jealous of me." I know that when I began to design and construct these
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handsome if not beautiful stone buildings for the Colonel I ran into plenty of
jealousies.
When I completed the plans for the big stone barn the Colonel wanted,
I was asked to show them to the architect, Mr. Hastings, who had done his
work. So I rather proudly went to New York with them only to find that Mr.
Hastings was not only not at all interested but he didn't care to see them. He
only said that the Colonel would never think of having anyone else do any
building for him.
As for that, the house Hastings built around an inner court was a snow
trap. Some winters the snow would pile up in this inner court ten feet deep.
And the French limestone he imported for it found our climate too severe; it
began to slack and shell. I was told that was due to the carelessness of the
builders. They let these stone lie around on the ground in the freezing rains.
All of which I can readily believe. When I first went there the limestone about
die cellar windows was all crumbling so we cut out replacements of our native
stone which are good to this day.
I surely was both busy and happy, I loved to build, to design and put
up beautiful stone buildings anti now I could do it without any thought about
the cost. I would go in the library to see the Colonel and he would ask me how
much money I needed. Often I'd say fifteen thousand and he would write me a
check for twenty. I deposited this in the Fallkill Bank in Poughkeepsie and
would check against it and afterward when they were settling up the Colonel's
estate they had me up before the lawyers to find out how much we had spent
there. For inheritance tax purposes, I felt sure.
Years afterwards, after this dream world was finished, friends of Father
tried to get me a job with a New York builder and he, of course, would have
none of me; of a builder who never estimated or even considered the cost!
The first buildings I put up were for a poultry plant, all built of our native stone
that we quarried ourselves, then lined with hollow tile and roofed with the best
Vermont slate. A plumber that put in the plumbing declared, "There can't be
no better construction than this!" The Colonel approved all plans, of course,
before we began work.
The dock and boathouse of the estate were small and not in keeping
with either the beautiful Aphrodite or the other buildings that Mr. Hastings of
Carrère and Hastings of New York had designed for the Colonel so it followed
that he wanted me to build a boathouse and dock that would be in keeping.
Captain Scott drew a plan of what he wanted and I was told to be down on the
dock with both Captain Scott and the plans to meet the Colonel there and go
over the situation but when I went down to tell Captain Scott I found he had
gone to New York. However, we managed without the plans and the next
morning Miss Larson found them in the Colonel's desk.
For our construction work we had four quarries, derricks, a stone
crusher and so on. I'll never forget the day the air compressor began to work
in the big quarry -- the sound of the air drills that was like a chain running out
a hawser pipe. We had three types of stone: a bloc sandstone that stood up
on edge in layers or "lifts", a stone that would split one way but. not across; a
rock that we used for the stone crusher; and over the mountain a very hard
green grey stone that would split in any direction when it was drilled and then
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had plugs and feathers driven in. And, of course, four or five blacksmiths to
make and sharpen stone cutting tools.
The greatest joy of all the building was not only the work over the
drawing board but in seeing the work in the quarries and the actual
construction. Twice, at least, while watching the construction, I came so near
to being killed that it wasn't funny. Once a derrick, on the dock, with its cables
and boom, crashed down on me. I know I had my hand in my pocket and after
I had jumped, I found my keys and money scattered about. The cause of that
was that the boom with its load swinging in, at a certain point, raised the strut
right off the spider on top of the mast. The derrick stood on the edge of the
dock so it could have only guy cables on the shore side.
The other occasion of my nearly being killed was an experience that I
feel few people have ever had, and it is so unusual that I can feel it yet. We
needed rubbish stone for fill down at the dock and I saw I could get it at the
face of an abandoned quarry so I had my foreman put in a line of holes and
shoot off the face of slate and rubbish stone for the teams to haul. I look a bar
and went prying at this hanging stone when suddenly there was a sound, a
sort of lisp, and I jumped backward.
The feeling of liquid stone, slate stone breaking like a wave, rolling
over and over and spewing outward is a sensation that is unforgettable. It only
tapped me on one ankle but I was on crutches for days - the weight and
power of that tumbling stone! Sometimes the big little word "if" is on your side
if I hadn't heard that lisp and if I hadn't been so quick that stone would have
literally made hash of me.
It had been a custom for the Colonel to take all the people on the place
for a day's picnic on the Aphrodite. We would go off down the river and there
were sandwiches and drinks for everyone, a privilege that I'm sorry to say,
was outrageously abused, so much so that some of the Italian quarry men
drank so much beer that they got sick and tracked up the fine rugs and
carpets. After that there were no more outings for the workmen and this is a
fact that is so often true, privileges are abused. The yacht and her finishings
meant nothing to them nor did the sail down the river. All they saw or
appreciated was free beer and that they liked too well. I remember one day
that Miss Larson took a few of us in the Aphrodite down to West Point where
the yacht swung about and dropped her anchor, her three hundred and fifty
feet of snowy sides,
Chapter XI
"As superintendent I had a chauffeur we called Pete, a short, jolly
Swede who liked to fish so, of course, we went fishing. Father got invited over
to Mr. Roof's place on the West branch of the Neversink to trout fish and Pete
drove us there in the Packard. To Pete's delight, Mr. Roof wrote out permits
for all three of us. We waded in the beautiful stream where it flows south from
Slide Mountain and almost every cast we got a rise. Pete soon caught his limit
so when we got back he took his trout over to the Big House for the Colonel's
dinner. There were guests and the butler had told them they were to have real
speckled trout, fresh out of one of the most beautiful streams in the Catskills,
but the cook, of course, considered that anything the chauffeur brought was
not fit for the Colonel and his guests and served his trout to the servants.
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I was learning to drive the Packard, my first attempt at handling a gear
shift car. One Sunday afternoon I took my family and a friend up the road in
the car and going up a slight grade the engine suddenly stopped. We were
directly in front of a summer boarding house so the guests all came out to see
the fun for those were the "get a horse" days. One of them said there was a
blacksmith just down the road. Well, I knew the sort of blacksmith I wanted
and I got to a telephone and called Pete. As the "city boarders", as the
natives called them, stood about making derisive comments a Pierce Arrow
limousine with a chauffeur in livery pulled up in front of me. And how the
expression of the city boarders did change!
We were in the War and there were many shortages to deal with. The
Colonel was sick as was Mother and there was a feeling of worry and
uncertainty. Colonel Payne loaned the Aphrodite to the Navy and she served
as a scout ship in foreign seas. Some of the Englishmen left to go and enlist
in the English Army.
But as anxious and troubled as were the times we had some fun too.
We would go up in the mountains for a picnic and fish in Cooper's Lake.
Sometimes we went to the stream only a short walk away. The streams that
flow into the Hudson along this section of the river all run north and then turn
and fall rapidly to join the river. Our stream here, Black Creek, does that; after
coming out of ponds and swamps it plunges down over ledges of rock and
then flows over gravel reaches. This is an ideal place for fish to come up out
of the river and even from the ocean to spawn: alewives, or herring, flashing
silver as they swim so swiftly in the brown water, both white and yellow perch
and also the big river suckers.
Our last trip out was a trip up to a lake in the Adirondacks where we
caught trout and Pete got a big lake trout. When we got back that night we
learned that Col. Payne had died in New York. Though his death had been
expected we still were not really prepared and we did not realize what
changes it was to make in our lives.
Captain Bingham, the Colonel's nephew who inherited the place here,
was in service and ordered a shutdown as far as possible on our work. The
big stone barn I had designed and was building was to be finished, however,
but not by me. A New York architect and his firm of builders were to do the
work instead and so I was called over to meet Mrs. Bingham's architect and to
hand over my plans to him. The man who came to take over was one of those
loud-mouthed bullies who said he'd put the fear of God in them so most of my
workmen, the good masons and stone cutters, all quit. We were in the thick of
the first World War then and good men were hard to get so instead of the barn
being finished at once, the work dragged on and on.
It is almost a universal truth that women love to change their
surroundings but men do not. Young Mrs. Bingham wanted to change
everything: she even wanted to change the entrance driveway to the Big
House, to move those century old Norway spruce that lined it and the
cobblestone gutters on each side. And change my plans for the big stone
barn. I had always liked a Latin phrase, "Horae pereunt et puniunt" so I had a
fine slab of stone, about four by five feet, cut by our most expert stone caller
with this phrase and set in the front wall of the barn and she ordered it ripped
out and broken up. But the workmen had too much respect for that beautiful
stone cutting by Harry Sheeley, who had cut it, so they put it out of sight and I
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asked Capt. Bingham if I could have it. I'm glad to say he was man enough to
give it to me and I set it into the front wall of a stone building I was putting up
for myself at Riverby.
That is something I've always had, regard or care for the work of
others; I respect what someone else has toiled to create. I find that many
people not only do not but they even enjoy destroying what others have made
as a young woman I knew expressed it -- "I like to throw things away, I enjoy
wasting things." Anyway I do not. In this I had a fellow traveler in Col. Payne;
he abhorred waste.
After a long illness my mother had died about the time the Colonel was
taken so Riverby was standing vacant and we moved back into it. The local
tax assessors refused to lower Capt. Bingham's tax on the place here so he
just gave it to the Episcopal City Mission Society of New York and then they
saw it taken entirely off the tax list. The Mission later sold part of the place to
a religious order that made changes in the Big house. I had occasion to go in
there one day and I saw the oil paintings in the loggia of the inner court had
all been painted over. The artist who had painted them died and how well I
remember his widow coming here to see his truly beautiful work. I felt so sorry
it had all been destroyed.
The stone dock and boathouse I designed I often pass as I go up or
down the river. The iron gate, the design of a peacock standing on a post, that
the Colonel liked, was not raised in the fall when the ice began to run, and I
think the ice damaged it. Some of the cut stone was rolled overboard by the
boys of the Mission, but the bollards or dock snubbing spiles that I made are
there yet and always remind me of those busy, happy days "at the Colonel's."
Emily wanted the children to have a month at the beach and since the
house at East Hampton had been sold, she rented a cottage at Ocean Bluff
near her family's - not on Long Island now but about thirty miles south of
Boston. I drove up to Roxbury with Jack, my dog, and got Father and we
spent two days driving over to the coast. In Cambridge we saw William
Brewster on Brattle Street and by chance Dr. Edward Emerson.
At Ocean Bluff we had carefree days loafing on the beach, swimming,
and fishing off Brant Rock. Father found the water too cold for swimming but
waded and collected the colorful granite pebbles he found in the water. We
did some sightseeing since I had the car and I remember that one day we
went to Plymouth and another day to Marshfield where we found the grave of
Daniel Webster.
That September Emily rented a house in Kingston so Betty, who was
going to high school there, would no longer have to board and Ursula and
John could go to a city school too. I told her shat she would have to pay the
rent if she moved to Kingston. "I have one house and I am not going to pay for
another." So she paid for it by having two boarders and she kept the house for
the next four years.
I wanted to do War work so I got a job at the Mingo hollow ammunition
plant in the shipping department which sent out enough TNT in one shipment
to wipe the city of Kingston off the map. When the War ended I took up the
vineyard work again, but there was no need to try to sell the grapes because
I've managed to get off that lee shore financially through thrift and
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management with the cooperation of Emily and my family and with what. Col.
Payne left us in his Will and with Father's help and lucky investments. The
principle is that once you are able to buy some stock you can use the
dividends to buy more stock and soon you no longer hear the surf pounding
on that lee shore.
Back at Riverby and living in the stone house it surely was a different
life. At the Colonel's two big Diesel engines had supplied the place with
electricity and I remember we had twenty-six lights just in our dining room
alone and now in West Park there was no electricity except for the two or
three people that made their own. But all that was to come.
We were in a period of great change. Taxes and wages were going up
and we had Prohibition. It has always amused me to think how childlike
Father was about it. He thought the question of Temperance was settled for
ever! He had belonged to the Anti-Saloon League and he was both surprised
and annoyed that they should want him to continue his contribution even after
Demon Rum was abolished.
So I began to learn to make wine and turn the grapes into something to
drink and supply my friends. I suppose I should be ashamed of this but I'm
sorry to say I am not: it was the first time in my life that I had something to sell
for which I not only got cash but got my price in full. And this was not the
least of it. The best part was you met such grand people! I remember the
treasurer of the Texas Corporation was one of my customers and Gladys
Swarthout, the Met. contralto, was another, and one of the top-ranking New
York surgeons another.
Father asked Mr. Ford if he had something that I could do and Mr.
Ford said, "Why, yes, he can sell Fordson tractors," but it was really a foolish
thing to say, because this is not tractor country with its stony pastures and
upland hillsides and all that. But I tried to sell them. The rule was to have a
dealership you had to buy a tractor. So I got my tractor and I tried, but, of
course, I never sold a single one.
Well, I used the tractor for hauling and did
away with the horse and was able to get along
that way. Then I gave up the tractor and used the
truck for all the hauling I had to do. Doing that for
some years I completely forgot that these
tractors would turn over if they weren't adjusted
and hooked just so.
One morning I hooked the tractor on the truck to haul it in to do some
work on it. I hooked it all around. I did everything but I was out of practice. I
was off my guard. So I started and it all happened so quickly. I looked up and
with my eye I saw the tractor, a mass of steel, over my head just ready to fall
down on me. I realized that life was done for me.
Well, it wasn't. A miracle happened, and when the tractor came down it
struck on the fender of the truck and it didn't hit me. The truck bucked and
hurtled and I was able to crawl out from under. But it came very, very close. I
remember running and telling Ursula, "Ursula, I'm still alive. I'm alive. I'm
alive." For I really didn't expect to be alive. I thought surely I'd be killed. So, I
tell you, I pulled the whiskers of death that day.
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References:
Julian Burroughs, Hudson River Memories, Riverby Books, 1887. (edited by
Elizabeth Burroughs Kelley) (available in Port Ewen public library) Chapter
X, pp 87 - 93; Chapter XI pp 95 - 99.
Editor's note: (5 Nov 2004) Julian wrote: "The Colonel's mother was a
Belmont and he was not only a son of Senator Payne of Ohio but he was a
direct descendent of Admiral Perry of the battle of Lake Eric fame. " In fact
Payne's mother was a Perry, and Payne was a relative or both Oliver Hazard
Perry of Lake Erie fame and Commodore Mathew Perry who opened Japan to
Western commerce.
Editors note: (7 Dec 2004) "Horae pereunt et puniunt" translates to "the hours
pass and they punish".
most recent revision: 7 December 2004
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Memoirs of Julian Burroughs
Julian Burroughs, son of the naturalist John Burroughs, was the
superintendent of the Payne estate from 1913 through early 1918.
Chapter X
In 1909 a New York man, Col. Oliver Hazard Payne, bought an estate
near us and began to build a big mansion. He had a fine three hundred and
fifty foot steam yacht, the old style of a millionaire's boat: white hull, clipper
bow, three masts, and a big buff stack. The place he bought had almost a mile
of riverfront so he could come up the Hudson from New York and anchor out
in front of his new home. The first time they came up here the crew felt they
were surely up in the woods so they were surprised when the anchor chain
kept running out almost as though there was no bottom.
Of course, I had to look her over, the
beautiful Aphrodite, so I rowed about her in my duck
boat and narrowly missed an accident. I was
keeping well off so I could look up at her rail and
superstructure and just missed the little boat they
had out on the end of a boom. It was so close!
Most of the local people got work on the place or construction and it
became known as "the big job." Henry Ackert, who used to fish with me, was
a night watchman but often would not show up so his father had to stay on for
him. Well, we were having a most unusual period of iceboating and Henry, of
course, had built a small boat and was having the time of his life with it, so he
wasn't always at his work as night watchman. His father, the patient, hard-
working Gill, would take his place, after working all day at his own job.
The iceboating that had been so thrilling and such a feature of this part
of the Hudson was on its way out. The wealthy people across the river, the
Roosevelts and Rogers and others, had gorgeous iceboats, shining butternut
or basswood frames and snowy white sails. There was a story that Rogers
was paying a native three dollars a day to search the woods for a big sound
butternut for the backbone, running plane, for an iceboat. Many young fellows
and even boys built a small one. I compromised by making a skate sail and
even with this I was often swept off my feel and slammed down on the ice.
It was at this time that an event occurred that was to make a great
difference in our lives. Glenn Buck of Chicago introduced Father to Henry
Ford and Mr. Ford gave Father a car, a real live Model T which Father and I
set about to learn to run.
One winter morning in 1913 when I opened my mail I found a letter
from Miss Larson, who ran Col. Payne's establishment, there being no Mrs.
Payne, and she asked me if I would become the superintendent for their place
here at West Park. That was such a surprise that it almost gave me a shock.
Since the girl we had helping us was a native related to people who worked at
Col. Payne's, the story soon got around and it gave the people here almost as
much of a shock as it had me. Many men were trying for that job and it was a
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bitter disappointment to them. The natives were stunned. They suddenly saw
me in a different light.
The Colonel had been treasurer of the old Standard Oil and father of
American Tobacco and no one knew, except his lawyers, how much money,
how many millions, he really had. There was a rumor, that for quite a good
many reasons I believe is more or less true, that he turned over to his heirs a
part of his wealth to avoid inheritance taxes.
So I was asked to call on the Colonel at his home on Fifth Avenue in
New York so he could look me over. I realized I was green and inexperienced,
yet I passed. I remember it all so well: the English butler, whom I already
knew, came to the door and took me in to the library where the Colonel was
reading his morning paper. A slightly built gentleman, an aristocrat of the blue
blood with the domed head of a financier and an eye that looked right through
you. The Colonel's mother was a Belmont and he was not only a son of
Senator Payne of Ohio but he was a direct descendent of Admiral Perry of the
battle of Lake Eric fame. He came to the door with me and was the perfect
gentleman, gracious and courteous.
Next I had to be installed al the beautiful, wonderful estate here and we
moved up to the superintendent's house, once the home of Col. Pratt. Of
course, everyone hated me, that is, those who were at the heads of
departments and who had made their own plans: the gardener and florist, the
chief engineer, the dairyman, and so on. I resolved that I'd carry on smoothly
and never fire anyone for any personal reason. As Miss Larson told a friend,
and it got back to me, I had everybody against me.
One of the dangers in such a situation is that there are those who in
turn hate the foreman or heads of departments and would run to me with any
story that they could get me to listen to and I was far too prone to listen. I
often think that though at Col. Payne's we had about as near an earthly
paradise as it is possible to get there was no end to jealousies and hatreds
and general meanness.
The Colonel, through Miss Larson, was like a father to us all. We had
everything from free milk, chickens, eggs, vegetables, telephone, much use of
the car and so on to always a generous Christmas present; so no wonder
there were many who wanted my job.
The Colonel was here in the summer with a household of servants. In
the fall, part of them went to the Fifth Avenue house and later, toward
Christmas, on down to Col. Payne's house at Thomasville, Georgia, returning
to New York in the spring and later up here. Miss Larson had charge of
everything and everyone, and a strict, yet kindhearted and generous
disciplinarian she was. Before going south the Colonel would give me sixty or
seventy thousand dollars to run the place while they were away and one
winter I know I ran short and had to write for more.
All my life I have been associated with artists, architects, writers and so
on and I find that they are mostly a jealous, selfish crowd. That is, rather more
so than the average run of humanity. I remember that some one told Father,
when he criticized W. J. Long for his nature faking, that Long said, "Oh he's
just jealous of me." I know that when I began to design and construct these
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handsome if not beautiful stone buildings for the Colonel I ran into plenty of
jealousies.
When I completed the plans for the big stone barn the Colonel wanted,
I was asked to show them to the architect, Mr. Hastings, who had done his
work. So I rather proudly went to New York with them only to find that Mr.
Hastings was not only not at all interested but he didn't care to see them. He
only said that the Colonel would never think of having anyone else do any
building for him.
As for that, the house Hastings built around an inner court was a snow
trap. Some winters the snow would pile up in this inner court ten feet deep.
And the French limestone he imported for it found our climate too severe; it
began to slack and shell. I was told that was due to the carelessness of the
builders. They let these stone lie around on the ground in the freezing rains.
All of which I can readily believe. When I first went there the limestone about
die cellar windows was all crumbling so we cut out replacements of our native
stone which are good to this day.
I surely was both busy and happy, I loved to build, to design and put
up beautiful stone buildings anti now I could do it without any thought about
the cost. I would go in the library to see the Colonel and he would ask me how
much money I needed. Often I'd say fifteen thousand and he would write me a
check for twenty. I deposited this in the Fallkill Bank in Poughkeepsie and
would check against it and afterward when they were settling up the Colonel's
estate they had me up before the lawyers to find out how much we had spent
there. For inheritance tax purposes, I felt sure.
Years afterwards, after this dream world was finished, friends of Father
tried to get me a job with a New York builder and he, of course, would have
none of me; of a builder who never estimated or even considered the cost!
The first buildings I put up were for a poultry plant, all built of our native stone
that we quarried ourselves, then lined with hollow tile and roofed with the best
Vermont slate. A plumber that put in the plumbing declared, "There can't be
no better construction than this!" The Colonel approved all plans, of course,
before we began work.
The dock and boathouse of the estate were small and not in keeping
with either the beautiful Aphrodite or the other buildings that Mr. Hastings of
Carrère and Hastings of New York had designed for the Colonel so it followed
that he wanted me to build a boathouse and dock that would be in keeping.
Captain Scott drew a plan of what he wanted and I was told to be down on the
dock with both Captain Scott and the plans to meet the Colonel there and go
over the situation but when I went down to tell Captain Scott I found he had
gone to New York. However, we managed without the plans and the next
morning Miss Larson found them in the Colonel's desk.
For our construction work we had four quarries, derricks, a stone
crusher and so on. I'll never forget the day the air compressor began to work
in the big quarry -- the sound of the air drills that was like a chain running out
a hawser pipe. We had three types of stone: a bloc sandstone that stood up
on edge in layers or "lifts", a stone that would split one way but. not across; a
rock that we used for the stone crusher; and over the mountain a very hard
green grey stone that would split in any direction when it was drilled and then
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had plugs and feathers driven in. And, of course, four or five blacksmiths to
make and sharpen stone cutting tools.
The greatest joy of all the building was not only the work over the
drawing board but in seeing the work in the quarries and the actual
construction. Twice, at least, while watching the construction, I came so near
to being killed that it wasn't funny. Once a derrick, on the dock, with its cables
and boom, crashed down on me. I know I had my hand in my pocket and after
I had jumped, I found my keys and money scattered about. The cause of that
was that the boom with its load swinging in, at a certain point, raised the strut
right off the spider on top of the mast. The derrick stood on the edge of the
dock so it could have only guy cables on the shore side.
The other occasion of my nearly being killed was an experience that I
feel few people have ever had, and it is so unusual that I can feel it yet. We
needed rubbish stone for fill down at the dock and I saw I could get it at the
face of an abandoned quarry so I had my foreman put in a line of holes and
shoot off the face of slate and rubbish stone for the teams to haul. I look a bar
and went prying at this hanging stone when suddenly there was a sound, a
sort of lisp, and I jumped backward.
The feeling of liquid stone, slate stone breaking like a wave, rolling
over and over and spewing outward is a sensation that is unforgettable. It only
tapped me on one ankle but I was on crutches for days - the weight and
power of that tumbling stone! Sometimes the big little word "if" is on your side
if I hadn't heard that lisp and if I hadn't been so quick that stone would have
literally made hash of me.
It had been a custom for the Colonel to take all the people on the place
for a day's picnic on the Aphrodite. We would go off down the river and there
were sandwiches and drinks for everyone, a privilege that I'm sorry to say,
was outrageously abused, so much so that some of the Italian quarry men
drank so much beer that they got sick and tracked up the fine rugs and
carpets. After that there were no more outings for the workmen and this is a
fact that is so often true, privileges are abused. The yacht and her finishings
meant nothing to them nor did the sail down the river. All they saw or
appreciated was free beer and that they liked too well. I remember one day
that Miss Larson took a few of us in the Aphrodite down to West Point where
the yacht swung about and dropped her anchor, her three hundred and fifty
feet of snowy sides,
Chapter XI
"As superintendent I had a chauffeur we called Pete, a short, jolly
Swede who liked to fish so, of course, we went fishing. Father got invited over
to Mr. Roof's place on the West branch of the Neversink to trout fish and Pete
drove us there in the Packard. To Pete's delight, Mr. Roof wrote out permits
for all three of us. We waded in the beautiful stream where it flows south from
Slide Mountain and almost every cast we got a rise. Pete soon caught his limit
so when we got back he took his trout over to the Big House for the Colonel's
dinner. There were guests and the butler had told them they were to have real
speckled trout, fresh out of one of the most beautiful streams in the Catskills,
but the cook, of course, considered that anything the chauffeur brought was
not fit for the Colonel and his guests and served his trout to the servants.
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I was learning to drive the Packard, my first attempt at handling a gear
shift car. One Sunday afternoon I took my family and a friend up the road in
the car and going up a slight grade the engine suddenly stopped. We were
directly in front of a summer boarding house so the guests all came out to see
the fun for those were the "get a horse" days. One of them said there was a
blacksmith just down the road. Well, I knew the sort of blacksmith I wanted
and I got to a telephone and called Pete. As the "city boarders", as the
natives called them, stood about making derisive comments a Pierce Arrow
limousine with a chauffeur in livery pulled up in front of me. And how the
expression of the city boarders did change!
We were in the War and there were many shortages to deal with. The
Colonel was sick as was Mother and there was a feeling of worry and
uncertainty. Colonel Payne loaned the Aphrodite to the Navy and she served
as a scout ship in foreign seas. Some of the Englishmen left to go and enlist
in the English Army.
But as anxious and troubled as were the times we had some fun too.
We would go up in the mountains for a picnic and fish in Cooper's Lake.
Sometimes we went to the stream only a short walk away. The streams that
flow into the Hudson along this section of the river all run north and then turn
and fall rapidly to join the river. Our stream here, Black Creek, does that; after
coming out of ponds and swamps it plunges down over ledges of rock and
then flows over gravel reaches. This is an ideal place for fish to come up out
of the river and even from the ocean to spawn: alewives, or herring, flashing
silver as they swim so swiftly in the brown water, both white and yellow perch
and also the big river suckers.
Our last trip out was a trip up to a lake in the Adirondacks where we
caught trout and Pete got a big lake trout. When we got back that night we
learned that Col. Payne had died in New York. Though his death had been
expected we still were not really prepared and we did not realize what
changes it was to make in our lives.
Captain Bingham, the Colonel's nephew who inherited the place here,
was in service and ordered a shutdown as far as possible on our work. The
big stone barn I had designed and was building was to be finished, however,
but not by me. A New York architect and his firm of builders were to do the
work instead and so I was called over to meet Mrs. Bingham's architect and to
hand over my plans to him. The man who came to take over was one of those
loud-mouthed bullies who said he'd put the fear of God in them so most of my
workmen, the good masons and stone cutters, all quit. We were in the thick of
the first World War then and good men were hard to get so instead of the barn
being finished at once, the work dragged on and on.
It is almost a universal truth that women love to change their
surroundings but men do not. Young Mrs. Bingham wanted to change
everything: she even wanted to change the entrance driveway to the Big
House, to move those century old Norway spruce that lined it and the
cobblestone gutters on each side. And change my plans for the big stone
barn. I had always liked a Latin phrase, "Horae pereunt et puniunt" so I had a
fine slab of stone, about four by five feet, cut by our most expert stone caller
with this phrase and set in the front wall of the barn and she ordered it ripped
out and broken up. But the workmen had too much respect for that beautiful
stone cutting by Harry Sheeley, who had cut it, so they put it out of sight and I
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asked Capt. Bingham if I could have it. I'm glad to say he was man enough to
give it to me and I set it into the front wall of a stone building I was putting up
for myself at Riverby.
That is something I've always had, regard or care for the work of
others; I respect what someone else has toiled to create. I find that many
people not only do not but they even enjoy destroying what others have made
as a young woman I knew expressed it -- "I like to throw things away, I enjoy
wasting things." Anyway I do not. In this I had a fellow traveler in Col. Payne;
he abhorred waste.
After a long illness my mother had died about the time the Colonel was
taken so Riverby was standing vacant and we moved back into it. The local
tax assessors refused to lower Capt. Bingham's tax on the place here so he
just gave it to the Episcopal City Mission Society of New York and then they
saw it taken entirely off the tax list. The Mission later sold part of the place to
a religious order that made changes in the Big house. I had occasion to go in
there one day and I saw the oil paintings in the loggia of the inner court had
all been painted over. The artist who had painted them died and how well I
remember his widow coming here to see his truly beautiful work. I felt so sorry
it had all been destroyed.
The stone dock and boathouse I designed I often pass as I go up or
down the river. The iron gate, the design of a peacock standing on a post, that
the Colonel liked, was not raised in the fall when the ice began to run, and I
think the ice damaged it. Some of the cut stone was rolled overboard by the
boys of the Mission, but the bollards or dock snubbing spiles that I made are
there yet and always remind me of those busy, happy days "at the Colonel's."
Emily wanted the children to have a month at the beach and since the
house at East Hampton had been sold, she rented a cottage at Ocean Bluff
near her family's - not on Long Island now but about thirty miles south of
Boston. I drove up to Roxbury with Jack, my dog, and got Father and we
spent two days driving over to the coast. In Cambridge we saw William
Brewster on Brattle Street and by chance Dr. Edward Emerson.
At Ocean Bluff we had carefree days loafing on the beach, swimming,
and fishing off Brant Rock. Father found the water too cold for swimming but
waded and collected the colorful granite pebbles he found in the water. We
did some sightseeing since I had the car and I remember that one day we
went to Plymouth and another day to Marshfield where we found the grave of
Daniel Webster.
That September Emily rented a house in Kingston so Betty, who was
going to high school there, would no longer have to board and Ursula and
John could go to a city school too. I told her shat she would have to pay the
rent if she moved to Kingston. "I have one house and I am not going to pay for
another." So she paid for it by having two boarders and she kept the house for
the next four years.
I wanted to do War work so I got a job at the Mingo hollow ammunition
plant in the shipping department which sent out enough TNT in one shipment
to wipe the city of Kingston off the map. When the War ended I took up the
vineyard work again, but there was no need to try to sell the grapes because
I've managed to get off that lee shore financially through thrift and
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management with the cooperation of Emily and my family and with what. Col.
Payne left us in his Will and with Father's help and lucky investments. The
principle is that once you are able to buy some stock you can use the
dividends to buy more stock and soon you no longer hear the surf pounding
on that lee shore.
Back at Riverby and living in the stone house it surely was a different
life. At the Colonel's two big Diesel engines had supplied the place with
electricity and I remember we had twenty-six lights just in our dining room
alone and now in West Park there was no electricity except for the two or
three people that made their own. But all that was to come.
We were in a period of great change. Taxes and wages were going up
and we had Prohibition. It has always amused me to think how childlike
Father was about it. He thought the question of Temperance was settled for
ever! He had belonged to the Anti-Saloon League and he was both surprised
and annoyed that they should want him to continue his contribution even after
Demon Rum was abolished.
So I began to learn to make wine and turn the grapes into something to
drink and supply my friends. I suppose I should be ashamed of this but I'm
sorry to say I am not: it was the first time in my life that I had something to sell
for which I not only got cash but got my price in full. And this was not the
least of it. The best part was you met such grand people! I remember the
treasurer of the Texas Corporation was one of my customers and Gladys
Swarthout, the Met. contralto, was another, and one of the top-ranking New
York surgeons another.
Father asked Mr. Ford if he had something that I could do and Mr.
Ford said, "Why, yes, he can sell Fordson tractors," but it was really a foolish
thing to say, because this is not tractor country with its stony pastures and
upland hillsides and all that. But I tried to sell them. The rule was to have a
dealership you had to buy a tractor. So I got my tractor and I tried, but, of
course, I never sold a single one.
Well, I used the tractor for hauling and did
away with the horse and was able to get along
that way. Then I gave up the tractor and used the
truck for all the hauling I had to do. Doing that for
some years I completely forgot that these
tractors would turn over if they weren't adjusted
and hooked just so.
One morning I hooked the tractor on the truck to haul it in to do some
work on it. I hooked it all around. I did everything but I was out of practice. I
was off my guard. So I started and it all happened so quickly. I looked up and
with my eye I saw the tractor, a mass of steel, over my head just ready to fall
down on me. I realized that life was done for me.
Well, it wasn't. A miracle happened, and when the tractor came down it
struck on the fender of the truck and it didn't hit me. The truck bucked and
hurtled and I was able to crawl out from under. But it came very, very close. I
remember running and telling Ursula, "Ursula, I'm still alive. I'm alive. I'm
alive." For I really didn't expect to be alive. I thought surely I'd be killed. So, I
tell you, I pulled the whiskers of death that day.
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References:
Julian Burroughs, Hudson River Memories, Riverby Books, 1887. (edited by
Elizabeth Burroughs Kelley) (available in Port Ewen public library) Chapter
X, pp 87 - 93; Chapter XI pp 95 - 99.
Editor's note: (5 Nov 2004) Julian wrote: "The Colonel's mother was a
Belmont and he was not only a son of Senator Payne of Ohio but he was a
direct descendent of Admiral Perry of the battle of Lake Eric fame. " In fact
Payne's mother was a Perry, and Payne was a relative or both Oliver Hazard
Perry of Lake Erie fame and Commodore Mathew Perry who opened Japan to
Western commerce.
Editors note: (7 Dec 2004) "Horae pereunt et puniunt" translates to "the hours
pass and they punish".
most recent revision: 7 December 2004
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