Henry James called the Hudson River America’s “great romantic stream,” and having once lived along its banks, I have never forgotten the peacefulness that a long view of it instilled upon my senses as it flowed silently down from West Point southward to the sea. The Hudson Valley is certainly one of the richest regions for historic landmarks, and the names of its villages—Spuyten Duyvil, Pocantico Hills, Yonkers, Sleepy Hollow, Katonah, Rhinebeck, Fishkill, Tarrytown—evoke its Native American, Dutch and British legacies.
        The preservation and restoration  of so many historic properties have been consistently among the finest, including Washington Irving’s home, Sunnyside; George Washington’s Headquarters in Newburgh; the John Jay Homestead in Katonah; and The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park. One of the most extraordinary is Lyndhurst, a half-mile south of the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge (which New Yorkers still call the Tappan Zee Bridge), of which architectural historian William H. Pierson Jr. said, “when completed in 1866 Lyndhurst was the most profoundly intelligent and provocative house to be built in this country since Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.” And it is indisputably America’s finest example of a Gothic Revival mansion.
        Spread over 67 acres, the estate’s trees had all been planted at a time when this was all farmland. Designed in 1838 by Alexander Jackson Davis on the original hunting grounds of the indigenous Lenape/Munsee tribe, the estate was a summer’s retreat for the only three family owners it ever had.  William S. Paulding, a military man and politician who was a neighbor of Washington Irving, lived there off and on, as did his son as of 1850. Owing to Lyndhurst’s unique design, many snickered at it as “Paulding’s Folly.”
            The next owner was merchant George Merritt, who, after the Civil War,  expanded the structure and updated the interior furnishings with a grand new dining room. Certainly the most famous of Lyndhurst’s occupants was Jay Gould (left), who purchased the estate in 1880, and, despite having his offices in Manhattan, returned home on his own private steamer to dine with his family each night. History has placed Gould among the most notorious “robber barons” of the Gilded Age, along with fierce competitors like J. Pierpont Morgan and Andrew Carnegie, although recent revisionist historians have credited him with significant public achievements as well as enormous commitments to charity from which he withheld his name as donor.
            Gould died of tuberculosis in 1892, when his eldest daughter, Helen, a great philanthropist in her own right, became steward of the estate, adding a kennel, laundry building, pool building and bowling alley, as well as opening it up to disadvantaged children for free sewing, cooking, and carpentry classes. She also supported many women’s programs. Gould’s youngest daughter, Anna, who was well known and much sought after in international society, finally married, becoming the Duchess of Talleyrand-Périgord and moving to France, but she continued to maintain Lyndhurst, which she opened up for charitable events. On her death in 1961, Anna bequeathed the house, which she had kept in impeccable, period condition, to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It opened as a museum and historic site in 1965.
            Visiting Lyndhurst today, which includes separate tours of the interior and of the vast estate, can be done in an hour or two, leaving you to also visit nearby Sleepy Hollow or the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers.  After being shuttered during the pandemic, Lyndhurst has become more of an attraction than ever, so that the tours fill up fast, making the purchase of tickets in advance essential. You collect your tickets at the former stables and join a group led by long-time guides, whose formal knowledge of the estate’s history is leavened with anecdotes about those who have come through over decades.
       Despite the imposing size and looming towers of the edifice, the sense that this really was a family retreat is palpable in finding that for much of its early days there was no electricity or gas with which to light or heat the house. The original rooms are not as spacious as one might have imagined for a very wealthy family, but Merritt’s additions gave it both breadth and depth, especially in the upstairs gallery, whose Tiffany windows (among many Tiffany works) brings in the Hudson Valley light to the great advantage of the extraordinary collection of European and American artwork displayed. Just above the gallery is a room where a small group of musicians and singers would perform.
       The library is arrayed with rare 19th century volumes, and the bedrooms are all of a different style, including Anna’s, which copied the beauty of the arched ceilings of Paris’s Sainte-Chapelle. The amount of carved wood, balustrades, walls painted to look like marble, and bas-relief wallpaper has a range few museums possess within such a compact space, and the fact that it has been so little altered in over 175 years has made it an ideal place for shooting period films and TV shows, which have included Dark Shadows (1970) "Collinwood"  and The Gilded Age series; it has also hosted the 2022 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. 
            Throughout the time when Lyndhurst is open (it closes this year after Christmas and re-opens in March), activities and presentations are held, which includes an M&M Performing Arts and Red Monkey Theater production of the Sherlock Holmes mystery “The Adventure of the Red-Headed League.”
            The house is completely festooned for the holidays, with several performances in December of “Mr. Dickens Tells a Christmas Carol.” On December 11 the Collective Brass ensemble performs at the Carriage House with seasonal favorites, including “The Nutcracker” and the “Hallelujah Chorus.”
            And behind it all flows the majestic Hudson River and beyond that all of America.

            As any reader of this column knows, I am always delighted to write about a great old or new steakhouse in Manhattan—Gallaghers, Empire, Benjamin Prime and several others—and to ignore those whose beef just doesn’t come up to the standards New York steakhouses set decades ago, when the original Palm, Christ Cella and Peter Luger’s battled to get the very best USDA Prime available. Simple arithmetic would tell you that every one of the New York and national steakhouse chains can’t possibly obtain enough first-rate product every night.
        An individual owner’s longstanding relationships with the meat vendors (especially now since the Meat District has been turned into a street of  boutiques) is critical in guaranteeing a consistent supply of great beef. Nick Vulaj has maintained those relationships for more than 30 years, so that his Wall Street area restaurant Flames is the best one down there, and he serves exactly the same quality at his suburban branch of Flames in Elmsford, New York, opened in 2016. If a Texan will drive four hours to a barbecue stand and a Californian can cross the border for Mexican food, anyone in the tristate area should consider an hour’s drive or train ride from Grand Central Terminal to dine at Flames.
            It’s a fine-looking restaurant with a popular white-and-gray polished marble bar, walls of wine from a 250-label list, neatly covered tables with handsome sturdy chairs, wainscoting and a rear dining room put to use for parties.
            You may start off with a lavish seafood tower for two or more (priced accordingly) or just indulge in a copious cocktail of true jumbo lump crabmeat ($27)—which, if you can find it at the store is going for $50 a pound—or perhaps a platter of blue point oysters ($19.95).  I usually order the eggplant rollatini with prosciutto and melted fontina ($17.50), and the spaghetti alla carbonara “made the right way”($39) is right on the mark and makes a great appetizer. Burgundy-flesh tuna comes with a moderate wasabi sauce. French onion soup, new to the menu ($13.95), was a classic rendering, as is carpaccio of beef with a light dressing ($44.95).
            Before I get to the steak, I highly recommend the four well-cut American lamb chops ($64), of which at least one is likely to leave with you in a doggie bag. The veal chop with mushrooms ($65) weighs in at about 16 ounces. You can also get some massive lobsters (MP), and there’s grilled branzino ($48.95) forthose who eschew meat.
            Vulaj took wagyu beef off the menu a while back for good reason: except for its unctuous fattiness, wagyu, Japanese or otherwise, is simply not as flavorful as his mineral-rich USDA Prime steaks, either a bone-in ribeye ($69), shell steak ($65) or porterhouse for two or more ($145 ).  A tomahawk steak ($95) is a lot of meat and a whole lot of bone, for show really. I am not usually a fan of filet mignon for the opposite reason from wagyu, that it hasn’t enough fat, but somehow, Flames’s massive hunk of filet with the bone (which makes a difference) with mushrooms ($79) could change my mind. It had fine texture, juiciness and flavor throughout.
        From onion rings ($16.95) to French fries ($16.95) and garlic-mashed potatoes ($16.95), the sides are all worthwhile, and if you really need dessert, Flames has the usual cheesecake ($12.95), though I can’t resist its old-fashioned carrot cake ($17.95).  
   You pay a high price for this quality, but I’ve come to realize that only a trencherman would polish off every morsel of such gargantuan portions, so you get a second meal out of the deal. In any case, Flames is worth the money and worth the effort to get there.

Open daily for lunch and dinner.

                                                                     Hong Kong Harbor

         For its size, however, the boat was actually very fast and by six o’clock the next day pulled into the Sai Wan Ho Marine Police Headquarters in Hong Kong Harbor.  There Katie and David were met by both plainclothes and uniformed officials, one of whom spoke very good English. He was perhaps in his forties.
         “Welcome to Hong Kong,” he said. “My name is Li Tao and I am the head of police here. I hope your trip to Hong Kong was not so uncomfortable.”
         “No,” said Katie, “We were treated very nicely, thank you.”
         “Good, I am glad to hear that. Now, we would like you to have a good night’s sleep at our headquarters, and then we will take your statement on what happened to you, and, if all goes well, you will be transferred to the American Consulate in Hong Kong.  We have already contacted them about your presence.”
         Katie and David both breathed a sigh of relief and thanked Mr. Tao.
       
          “Will we have a chance to make some phone calls?” asked Katie.
         “I’m sure that will be fine in the morning, after our interview is over.”
         David knew that would be standard procedure in most countries, still confused as to what the time change was between Hong Kong and New York. They’d been accused of nothing, so there was no need to request a lawyer.
         The officials brought them to the nearby headquarters (below), they were given a good dinner and comfortable rooms for the night. The next morning they were awakened at eight o’clock, brought to breakfast and then to Mr. Tao’s office, where the interview began immediately.
         The Chinese officials had already learned a good deal about the events on the trawler, and it was quite obvious that the Americans had been kidnapped—David liked to say “shanghai-ed” now that he was safe—and brought out beyond the legal limit so that if, by some miracle, the bodies had been discovered, there was no proof of which side of Taiwan Strait the trawler had come from.  It was pure luck that the Chinese police boat found the trawler in those waters, although ever since the missile testing in the area the region had called for better vigilance by both sides.
         In giving their version of the story, Katie began with the reasons they were in Taipei to see Shui, about the murder of the American couple, and the interview with Shui that ended with their being kidnapped. Tao said nothing about Shui until David asked, “Do you know this man Hai Shui?
         Tao said, “Very well, very well. We Chinese consider him one of the worst thieves of our artistic heritage and wealth when his family joined Chang Kai-Shek and escaped to Taiwan. Were he to step foot in China, he would be arrested and tried for treason.”
         Katie then realized Shui himself would never dare attend the upcoming auction but would have an emissary there, or perhaps just phone in his bid on the Vermeer.
         “Are you by any chance aware of this sale of a painting by the artist Jan Vermeer next week?”
         Tao shook his head and said, “I was not, until you told me your story. But, if it is true, and if Hai Shui tries to buy the painting, it would be another example of his treachery.  Now that it has come to light, I would say our government would never allow the painting to leave Hong Kong.”
         Katie and David had no idea what the ramifications were if Shui outbid everyone else—after all, the Chinese were trying to get as much money as possible from the sale of a painting that they did not consider part of their cultural heritage.  But when the story came out about Shui, he would be barred from bidding, probably already under arrest by Interpol or the Taipei police.
         “Well, then, I am sure my colleagues and I will have more questions for you,” said Tao, “but I think we can safely transfer you to the American Consulate now. We do ask that you remain their guests to help us with our investigation.”
         “Do you know how long that will be?” asked David.
         “Justice is faster here in China than in your country, but I believe you will be able to return to the United States within ten days.”
         Katie and David looked at each other and smiled. It was just enough time to cover the actual auction, which was scheduled for the following Thursday.
         “Well,” said David, “It looks like we have an all-expenses paid holiday in Hong Kong and get to be right in the room when the painting goes up for sale.”
         “I know,” said Katie, “though I’ll have to discuss it with my editor. I can’t imagine he’d object to the American Consulate General taking care of us, as long as he gets a good story out of all this. I can’t wait to tell him everything that’s happened. He’ll love the fact we almost got killed.”
         Both Katie and David knew that not enough time had gone by for their friends, colleagues and family members to wonder why they hadn’t heard from the two of them, but the first call Katie wanted to make was to her parents, David to Kiley.
         “You know, the story about Chin trying to knock off Lauden should be in the American papers by now, don’t you think?” she asked. “Trying to kill one of New York’s most prominent billionaire-philanthropists would be big news. Wonder where we can get a paper.”
         “The Consulate will have all the latest news,” said David. “Plus, a lot of the papers may not even have it.  Obviously, our guys have been informed about what happened to us.”            

         A police car took Katie and David to the Consulate (the U.S. Embassy was in Beijing), which dated back to 1848 but since the 1950s was located in a drab concrete bunker-shaped building on Garden Road near Hong Kong Park.  The Consul General, in his fifth year, greeted them at the front door.  He introduced himself as Michael Curren.
         “Well, you two have had quite a week,” he said. “We’ve been briefed by the Chinese, but of course we want to hear the story from you. Come in, come in.  Coffee? I suppose you’ve had enough tea.”
         The Consulate was large but segmented into offices for commercial dealings, granting visas, and obtaining passports. 
         “We don’t get many requests for asylum,” said Curren, “so we’re really not set up to house you here, but I hope you’ll accept my wife’s and my invitation to stay at our residence.  We’ve plenty of room since our kids went to the states for college.”
         They exchanged pleasantries, and Katie and David were ushered into a conference room to speak with Curren and several other Consulate officers. 
         Katie asked, “Would it be possible to call some people in the States to tell them we’re all right?”
         “Certainly,” said Curren. “How about we leave you alone here with the phones for, what? Half an hour? These are all pretty secure lines.”
          “That would be great,” said David.
        There were four phones set around the room, with two on the conference desk. Katie first called her parents—it was nine p.m. in New York—and told them everything was fine, that she and David had had a little adventure but she’d tell them about it when she got home, after the auction.