The
Ridgelys were, it appears, the great Protestant land barons of this
region as the Carrolls were the great Catholics, and, like the Carrolls,
they remain to-day the proprietors of a vast estate and an incomparable
house.
CHAPTER VIII
WE MEET THE HAMPTON GHOST
There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple;
If the ill spirit have so fair a house,
Good things will strive to dwell with 't.
--THE TEMPEST.
Hampton is probably the largest of Maryland's old mansions, and the
beauty of it is more theatrical than the beauty of Doughoregan Manor;
for although the latter is the older of the two, the former is not only
spectacular by reason of its spaciousness, the delicacy of its
architectural details, and the splendor of its dreamlike terraced
gardens, but also for a look of beautiful, dignified, yet somehow tragic
age--a look which makes one think of a wonderful old lady; a belle of
the days of minuets and powdered wigs and patches; a woman no less
wonderful in her declining years than in her youth, but wonderful in
another way; a proud old aristocrat, erect and spirited to the last; her
bedchamber a storehouse of ivory lace and ancient jewelry, her memory a
storehouse of recollections, like chapters from romantic novels of the
days when all men were gallant, and all women beautiful: recollections
of journeys made in the old coach, which is still in the stable, though
its outriders have been buried in the slaves' burying ground these many
years; recollections of the opening of Hampton, when, as the story
goes, gay Captain Charles Ridgely, builder of the house, held a card
party in the attic to celebrate the event, while his wife, Rebecca
Dorsey Ridgely, a lady of religious turn, marked the occasion
simultaneously with a prayer-meeting in the drawing room; of the ball
given by the Ridgelys in honor of Charles Carroll's granddaughters, the
exquisite Caton sisters; of hunt meets here, long, long ago, and hunt
balls which succeeded them; of breakneck rides; of love-making in that
garden peopled with the ghosts of more than a century of lovers; of
duels fought at dawn.
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