Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.
The Hudson River has been called the American Rhine because of the many castles built along its shores (from 1870 to the early 20th century) when multi-millionaires had no inhibition showing off their wealth – with all the self-justification characteristic of the old aristocracies of Europe. For instance, there is Bannerman’s Castle located between Cold Spring and Beacon (on the east side of the majestic river) built over a 17 year period by a Scots immigrant who made his fortune after the Civil War buying and selling war surplus materiel (Remember the Army-Navy Stores?). It’s complete with turrets and a moat; the place has no right angles . . . Destroyed by a fire in 1969, the castle’s ruins remain spectacular – and some say haunted.
I had the good fortune when I was 15 years old to enter the Graymoor Friars’ minor seminary on a mountaintop near Cold Spring and became acquainted with some of these castles on Saturday hikes. Not far away was Dicks Folly – the dream castle planned by Evans P. Dick to rival Hyde Park. Mrs. Dick was a collector of medieval art and planned the place to be a replica of the Moorish castle Alhambra.
But the castle that impressed me personally was Osborn’s Castle at a height of 620 feet above the river opposite West Point, built by a railroad tycoon in the late 1800’s. It became accessible to us minor seminarians on a hike along the green crest of the mountain on which it was built. Being working class kids, we retained a sense of awe toward the barons of the Hudson Valley and their mysterious dwellings. We feared getting arrested for trespassing – but on we went. And then we came into a clearing full of grape vines beyond which the tall, red tiled tower and the bulk of the mansion overshadowed us. Reverence overcame us; we walked warily toward the place – and then suddenly there he was, the current Mr. Osborn, looking like Citizen Kane of Xanadu – standing on a large stone porch surveying his domain. He wore a silk dressing gown and white scarf and he looked benignly down on us. We reciprocated with wide-open eyes as if he were the Wizard of Oz. And he spoke: “Hello boys, feel free to walk around; you might want to taste the grapes.” We were speechless; we simply nodded our gratitude and made our way back into the woods and away.
Despite the kindly greeting, the experience of that remote castle remains with me. Over time I wondered whether it awakened in me memories of those forbidding castles of Arthurian days, of knights setting out on a quest for the Holy Grail. Was I not doing the same thing, entering a seminary, set upon a journey the outcome of which I could not be sure, a journey of adventure latent with unanticipated grief and yet discovery in ways that both opened up horizons while also exposing the malpractice of my heritage – but a journey one has no choice but to pursue?
It’s like the apprentice knight Childe Roland in Robert Browning’s famous poem. Like Childe Roland, I too, as a naïve teen, had a long and scary road ahead, less predictable than I thought, a road showing remnants of so many who had come to grief. Eventually Childe Roland’s path led to the Dark Tower that overshadows all our lives, all of history. Indeed there it stands casting its shadow ominously over the news of every day. The round squat turret, blind as a fool’s heart, / Built of brown stone, without a counterpart / In the whole world. And yet what does Childe Roland do (and what could I even unconsciously do) but what every Spirit driven human being must do? Announce my challenge! Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, / And blew. “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”