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Updated: June 5, 2025
Irving was in his best estate of health and spirits, when his mood was of the sunniest, and Wolfert's Roost was in the spring-time of its charms, it was my fortune to pass a few days there with my wife. Mr. The drive of two miles from Tarrytown to that delicious lane which leads to the Roost, who does not know all that, and how charming it is?
"This is the spot!" said the doctor in an almost inaudible tone. Wolfert's heart was in his throat. "Shall I dig?" said Sam, grasping the spade. "Pots tousends, no!" replied the little doctor, hastily. He now ordered his companions to keep close by him and to maintain the most inflexible silence.
Any one witnessing the scene thus strangely lighted up by fire, lanthorn, and the reflection of Wolfert's red mantle, might have mistaken the little doctor for some foul magician, busied in his incantations, and the grizzled-headed Sam as some swart goblin, obedient to his commands. At length the spade of the fisherman struck upon something that sounded hollow.
Wolfert's Roost was almost hidden by them; but you could catch glimpses of its curious roof, full of quaint corners and projections, and the old-fashioned stone mansion said to be modelled after the cocked hat of Peter the Headstrong. Its low stories were full of nooks and angles. There were roses and hollyhocks like rows of sentinels, and sweet brier clambering about.
The sound vibrated to Wolfert's heart. He struck his spade again. "'Tis a chest," said Sam. "Full of gold, I'll warrant it!" cried Wolfert, clasping his hands with rapture. Scarcely had he uttered the words when a sound from overhead caught his ear.
"Louis Napoleon and Eugénie Montijo, Emperor and Empress of France!" he wrote. "One of whom I have had a guest at my cottage on the Hudson; the other of whom, when a child, I have had on my knee at Granada! It seems to cap the climax of the strange dramas of which Paris has been the theatre during my lifetime." In 1855, "Wolfert's Roost" was published.
I suppose it is not assumed for a moment that "Wolfert's Roost," the "Tales of a Traveller," the story of "Rip Van Winkle," the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and the picturesque but evanescent tales of "The Alhambra" can be brought into discussion on the same terms with Hawthorne's romances, as works of art; and they assuredly cannot be as studies of character, for of this they have next to nothing.
That half-humorous turn of the head and almost the twinkling eye, that brisk and jaunty air, that springing step, that modest and gentle and benign presence, all these could be suggested by the artist, and in their happy combination the pleased loiterer would perceive old Diedrich Knickerbocker and the summer dreamer of the Hudson legends, the charming biographer of Columbus and of Goldsmith, the cheerful gossip of Wolfert's Roost, and the mellow and courteous Geoffrey Crayon, who first taught incredulous Europe that beyond the sea there were men also, and that at last all the world must read an American book.
By degrees a revulsion of thought took place in Wolfert's mind, common to those whose golden dreams have been disturbed by pinching realities. The idea gradually stole upon him that he should come to want.
WASHINGTON IRVING now sixty-seven years of age had found a resting-place at Wolfert's Roost, close by the scenes which lie in the immortal beauty that radiates from his pages, and when he thought that in this Tusculum he was safe from all annoying, free to enjoy the quietness and ease he had earned from the world, the same vandals laid the track through his grounds, not only destroying all their beauty and attraction, but leaving fens from which these summer heats distilled contagion.
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