Rhinebeck

DGF and I visited Rhinebeck this past weekend. The weather was exquisite in a manner that made me think of Washington Irving's prose in Sleepy Hollow.

"It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day, the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet."

As a matter of fact it was a weekend devoted largely to history. We walked through houses built by wealthy American families during the Gilded Age and some of the cemetaries in which they now abide. The Vanderbilt home was well preserved but offered only a faint and distance glimpse of the people who had lived there. The tour guide worked hard, and he was sincere, knowledgable and entertaining but in the end it was hard to imagine anyone every living in the building. It was a walk through a memorial.

We also visited Wilderstein, a glorious wooden Queen Anne Victorian in the wilderness as I think the name implies. The last member of the family died about 10 years ago on the eve of her 100th birthday. Apparently the family never threw anything away and the house is filled with a century and a half of clothing, books, art, bric-a-brac, furniture and photos. Of course that made it seem that the occupants had just left the room.

We also looked at several once very grand homes now in ruin. That is something I haven't seen very often excepting some natural disaster.