Guests from Gibbet Island

I have recorded an audio reading of Washington Irving's short story, Guests from Gibbet Island.

Written in Irving's later life (around 1855), Guests from Gibbet Island is set in the late 17th century in the Village of Communipaw, a settlement on the western shore of the bay by the city previously known as New Amsterdam, now New York. For a long time after the British took control of the New Netherland colony, Communipaw remained a Dutch enclave, and anti-British sentiment was the norm there.

The son of Scottish merchant immigrants, Irving was born on Williams Street in New York City in 1783 but was teen-aged before he learned of the Dutch origins of New York and the surrounding area; in tradition, the history books had long been already rewritten by the victors. From one of his sister's Dutch-American suitors, Irving learned of the New Netherland period and began a lifelong interest in the period and the culture, writing stories anchored in Dutch characters, names, habits and politics, including the novels Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Irving also wrote several short stories including at least four set in Communipaw in what is today Jersey City, New Jersey, where I live. Guests from Gibbet Island is one of these.

For those who know the area, I estimate the location of the public house in the story, The Wild Goose, to be at the western edge of Liberty State Park, near the Light Rail station there. At the time the story takes place, high tide brought the bay waters to about what is, indeed, the foot of a street known today as Communipaw Avenue.

Guests from Gibbet Island was brought to me by a writer friend in late 2006. Its simple 37 paragraphs struck me as a somewhat elegant description of the legacy that the Dutch left on Jersey City, the New York region and, perhaps, the United States -- we think of our multicultural business profile and the U.S.'s apparent high drive to commerce and production as American characteristics when they are, in fact, traditional Dutch cultural norms imprinted on our region and our country. As early as the 15th century, the Low Country cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam were home to the most diverse merchant class in Europe.

Irving's story stuck with me, and soon I began to learn more about the period, about Irving and about New Netherland, and eventually to write an adaptation of this story for stage. The play script is more detailed than Irving's short story, with more characters and more dialogue, but I have kept Irving's timeline, historical considerations, and the two characters who drive the action from beginning to end. The play's working title is "Roost". (I have a dream to one day see this play performed in the parking lot of the Light Rail Station or the Foundry Condominiums at the end of Communipaw Avenue where most of the story's action takes place. If you're interested in staying informed about the progress of this play, please let me know.)

If you'd like to hear this story read by me, please send an email to trishszymanski@gmail.com and I will send you the audio story.

And please, feel free to pass this audio reading on to anyone you think might enjoy it, or to someone whose pants you would like to scare off.