The threat of rain loomed all day. It fell, lightly, exactly in the middle of my ride, when I stopped to eat. And it very kindly stopped just as I resumed my ride.
So went my first ride of the new year: 140 kilometers round trip to Greenwich, Connecticut and back. The day was warm for this time of year: temperatures hovered between 10 and 15 C (50 to 60 F), which I like at any time of year. The air felt fresher than usual: Perhaps the New Year's Day rain washed away some of the pollution. It may also have had to do with the near-absence of traffic through most of my ride.
On my way back, I stopped for the traffic light at Fenimore Steet in Mamaroneck, just across from the harbor. When the light turned green, I proceeded and, on the other side of the intersection, noticed this:
I've noticed the De Lancey name (sometimes spelled as one word, as in the name of a Manhattan street) in the area. Apparently, the French Huguenot family emigrated to the then-British colony of New York after the Edict of Fontainebleau, an order that revoked the Edict of Nantes, which gave the Protestant Huguenots most of the same rights French Catholic citizens enjoyed.
Given that, it's not surprising that the De Lanceys amassed such wealth and married other prominent families (whose names are sprinkled all over New York) after arriving. One of the reasons, I believe, Louis XIV and much of the French establishment wanted to suppress Huguenots--who were Calvinists, like the Puritans--is that, because they emphasized education and didn't celebrate most of the Catholic feast days (meaning they worked more), they became, essentially, the merchant and technocrat classes of France in a similar way to Jews in some European communities before the Inquisition.
The De Lanceys might well have remained one of the prominent families of New York, and America, had their allegiances been different. In the Revolution, they were Loyalists. In fact, James De Lancey--to whom the house belonged--formed, along with his uncle, a brigade that was known for its brutality against American revolutionaries. Once the latter won, the family had to give up their properties and fled to Nova Scotia and England.
Unless you are a member of an historical society in New York state or a graduate student in early American history, you probably hadn't heard of the De Lanceys before today. But you have almost surely heard of the other name on the plaque: James Fenimore Cooper, one of this country's first popular authors. (During Edgar Allan Poe's lifetime, his poetry and fiction were more popular in Europe, especially France, than they were in the United States.)
I wonder how De Lancey or Cooper would feel about the restaurant that's in the house. I think Poe would have appreciated the view some of its patrons would have had yesterday:
