Old Time Wall Papers Part 5

IV

WALL PAPERS IN HISTORIC HOMES [Ill.u.s.tration]

IV

WALL PAPERS IN HISTORIC HOMES

Esther Singleton, in her valuable and charming book on _French and English Furniture_, tells us that in the early Georgian period, from 1714 to 1754, the art of the Regency was on the decline, and "the fas.h.i.+onable taste of the day was for Gothic, Chinese and French decorations; and the expensive French wall-painting and silken hangings were imitated in wall-paper and the taste even spread to America." In 1737, the famous Hanc.o.c.k House was being built and, until it was demolished a few years ago (1863), it was the last of the great mansions standing that could show what the stately homes of old Boston were like.

This house was built by Thomas Hanc.o.c.k, son of the Rev. John Hanc.o.c.k, the kitchen of whose house is now owned by the Lexington Historical Society.

On January 23, 1737-8, we find him writing from Boston to Mr. John Rowe, Stationer, London, as follows: "Sir, Inclosed you have the Dimensions of a Room for a Shaded Hanging to be done after the Same Pattern I have sent per Captain Tanner, who will deliver it to you. It's for my own House and Intreat the favour of you to Get it Done for me to Come Early in the Spring, or as Soon as the nature of the Thing will admitt.

"The pattern is all was Left of a Room Lately Come over here, and it takes much in ye Town and will be the only paper-hanging for Sale here wh. am of opinion may Answer well. Therefore desire you by all means to get mine well Done and as Cheap as Possible and if they can make it more beautifull by adding more Birds flying here and there, with Some Landskips at the Bottom, Should like it well. Let the Ground be the Same Colour of the Pattern. At the Top and Bottom was a narrow Border of about 2 Inches wide wh. would have to mine. About three or four years ago my friend Francis Wilks, Esq., had a hanging Done in the Same manner but much handsomer Sent over here from Mr. Sam Waldon of this place, made by one Dunbar in Aldermanbury, where no doubt he, or some of his successors may be found. In the other part of these Hangings are Great Variety of Different Sorts of Birds, Peac.o.c.ks, Macoys, Squirril, Monkys, Fruit and Flowers etc.

"But a greater Variety in the above mentioned of Mr. Waldon's and Should be fond of having mine done by the Same hand if to be mett with. I design if this pleases me to have two Rooms more done for myself. I Think they are handsomer and Better than Painted hangings Done in Oyle, so I Beg your particular Care in procuring this for me and that the patterns may be Taken Care of and Return'd with my goods."

John Adams writes in his Diary (1772): "Spent this evening with Mr.

Samuel Adams at his house. Adams was more cool, genteel, and agreeable than common; concealed and retained his pa.s.sions, etc. He affects to despise riches, and not to dread poverty; but no man is more ambitious of entertaining his friends handsomely, or of making a decent, an elegant appearance than he.

"He has newly covered and glazed his house, and painted it very neatly, and has new papered, painted and furnished his rooms; so that you visit at a very genteel house and are very politely received and entertained."

Paper is the only material with which a man of but little means can surround himself with a decorative motive and can enjoy good copies of the expensive tapestries and various hangings which, until recently, have been within the reach of the wealthy only. The paper-hanger was not so much a necessity in the old days as now. The family often joined in the task of making the paste, cutting the paper and placing it on the walls. This was not beneath the dignity of George Was.h.i.+ngton, who, with the a.s.sistance of Lafayette, hung on the walls at Mount Vernon paper which he had purchased abroad.

The story goes that the good Martha lamented in the presence of Lafayette that she should be unable to get the new paper hung in the banquet room in time for the morrow's ball in honor of the young Marquis. There were no men to be found for such work. Lafayette at once pointed out to Mistress Was.h.i.+ngton that she had three able-bodied men at her service--General Was.h.i.+ngton, Lafayette himself and his aide-de-camp.

Whereupon the company fell merrily to work, and the paper was hung in time for the ball. Not only did the Father of our Country fight our battles for us, but there is evidence that he gracefully descended to a more peaceful level and gave us hints as to that valuable combination known to the world as flour paste.

There is in existence a memorandum in Was.h.i.+ngton's hand, which reads as follows:

"Upholsterer's directions:

"If the walls have been whitewashed over with glew water. If not--Simple and common paste is sufficient without any other mixture but, in either case, the Paste must be made of the finest and best flour, and free from lumps. The Paste is to be made thick and may be thinned by putting water to it.

"The Paste is to be put upon the paper and suffered to remain about five minutes to soak in before it is put up, then with a cloth press it against the wall, until all parts stick. If there be rinkles anywhere, put a large piece of paper thereon and then rub them out with cloth as before mentioned."

During the period when Mount Vernon was in private hands, the papers of Was.h.i.+ngton's day were removed. There is now on the upper hall a medallion paper which is reproduced from that which hung there at the time of the Revolution.

Benjamin Franklin was another of our great men who interested themselves in domestic details. In 1765 he was in London, when he received from his wife a letter describing the way in which she had re-decorated and furnished their home. Furniture, carpets and pictures were mentioned, and wall coverings as well. "The little south room I have papered, as the walls were much soiled. In this room is a carpet I bought cheap for its goodness, and nearly new.... The Blue room has the harmonica and the harpsichord, the gilt sconce, a card table, a set of tea china, the worked chairs and screen--a very handsome stand for the tea kettle to stand on, and the ornamental china. The paper of the room has lost much of its bloom by pasting up." This blue room must have been the subject of further correspondence. Nearly two years later Franklin wrote to his wife:

"I suppose the room is too blue, the wood being of the same colour with the paper, and so looks too dark. I would have you finish it as soon as you can, thus: paint the wainscot a dead white; paper the walls blue, and tack the gilt border round the cornice. If the paper is not equally coloured when pasted on, let it be brushed over again with the same colour, and let the _papier mache_ musical figures be tacked to the middle of the ceiling. When this is done, I think it will look very well."

There are many old houses in New England and the Middle States which are of historic interest, and in some of these the original paper is still on the walls and in good preservation, as in the Dorothy Quincy house at Quincy, Ma.s.sachusetts. The Dorothy Quincy house is now owned by the Colonial Dames of Ma.s.sachusetts, who have filled it with beautiful colonial furniture and other relics of Dorothy Q's day. The papers on all the walls are old, but none so early as that on the large north parlor (Plate XXIX), which was imported from Paris to adorn the room in which Dorothy Quincy and John Hanc.o.c.k were to have been married in 1775.

Figures of Venus and Cupid made the paper appropriate to the occasion.

"But the fortunes of war," says Katharine M. Abbott in her _Old Paths and Legends of New England_, "upset the best of plans, and her wedding came about very quietly at the Thaddeus Burr house in Fairfield. Owing to the prescription on Hanc.o.c.k's head, they were forced to spend their honeymoon in hiding, as the red-coats had marked for capture this elegant, c.o.c.ked-hat 'rebel' diplomatist of the blue and bluff. Dorothy Quincy Hanc.o.c.k, the niece of Holmes's 'Dorothy Q.,' is a fascinating figure in history. Lafayette paid her a visit of ceremony and pleasure at the Hanc.o.c.k house on his triumphal tour, and no doubt the once youthful chevalier and reigning belle flung many a quip and sally over the teacups of their eventful past."

The Hanc.o.c.k-Clarke house, in Lexington, Ma.s.sachusetts, is a treasure house of important relics, besides files of pamphlets, ma.n.u.scripts and printed doc.u.ments, portraits, photographs, furniture, lanterns, canteens, pine-tree paper currency, autographs, fancy-work--in fact almost everything that could be dug up. There is also a piece of the original paper on the room occupied by Hanc.o.c.k and Adams on April 18, 1775. But the bit of paper and the reproduction are copyrighted, and there is no more left of it. It is a design of pomegranate leaves, buds, flowers and fruits--nothing remarkable or attractive about it. I have a small photograph of it, which must be studied through a gla.s.s.

In the sitting-room the paper is a series of arches, evidently Roman, a foot wide and three feet high. The pillars supporting the arches are decorated with trophies--s.h.i.+elds, with javelins, battle-axes and trumpets ma.s.sed behind. The design is a mechanical arrangement of urn and pedestal; there are two figures leaning against the marble, and two reclining on the slab above the urn. One of these holds a trumpet, and all the persons are wearing togas. The groundwork of color in each panel is Roman red; all the rest is a study in black and white lines. Garlands droop at regular intervals across the panels.

The paper in the Lafayette room at the Wayside Inn, South Sudbury, Ma.s.sachusetts, is precious only from a.s.sociation. The inn was built about 1683, and was first opened by David Howe, who kept it until 1746.

It was then kept by his three sons in succession, one son, Lyman Howe, being the landlord when Longfellow visited there and told the tale of Paul Revere's ride. It was renovated under the management of Colonel Ezekiel Howe, 1746-1796, and during that time the paper was put on the Lafayette room.

Several important personages are known to have occupied this room, among them General Lafayette, Judge Sewall, Luigi Monti, Doctor Parsons, General Artemus Ward. The house was first known as Howe's in Sudbury, or Horse Tavern, then as the Red Horse Tavern; and in 1860 was immortalized by Longfellow as The Wayside Inn.

"The landlord of Longfellow's famous Tales was the dignified Squire Lyman Howe, a justice of the peace and school committee-man, who lived a bachelor, and died at the inn in 1860--the last of his line to keep the famous hostelry. Besides Squire Howe, the only other real characters in the Tales who were ever actually at the inn were Thomas W. Parsons, the poet; Luigi Monti, the Sicilian, and Professor Daniel Treadwell, of Harvard, the theologian, all three of whom were in the habit of spending the summer months there. Of the other characters, the musician was Ole Bull, the student was Henry Ware Wales, and the Spanish Jew was Israel Edrehi. Near the room in which Longfellow stayed is the ball-room with the dais at one end for the fiddlers. But the polished floor no longer feels the pressure of dainty feet in high-heeled slippers gliding over it to the strains of contra-dance, cotillion, or minuet, although the merry voices of summer visitors and jingling bells of winter sleighing parties at times still break the quiet of the ancient inn."

Judge Sewall, in his famous diary, notes that he spent the night at Howe's in Sudbury--there being also a Howe's Tavern in Marlboro.

Lafayette, in 1824, spent the night there and, as Was.h.i.+ngton pa.s.sed over this road when he took command of the army at Cambridge, it is more than likely that he also stopped there, as Colonel Howe's importance in this neighborhood would almost demand it. Was.h.i.+ngton pa.s.sed over this road again when on his tour of New England, and then Colonel Howe was the landlord and squire, as well as colonel of a regiment.

Burgoyne stopped there, a captive, on his way from Ticonderoga to Boston; and, as this was the most popular stage route to New York city, Springfield and Albany, those famous men of New England--Otis, Adams, Hanc.o.c.k, and many others--were frequent guests. A company of horse patrolled the road, and tripped into the old bar for their rum and home-brewed ale. It is worth recording that Aga.s.siz, in his visits to the house, examined the ancient oaks near the inn, and p.r.o.nounced one of them over a thousand years old. Edna Dean Proctor refers to them in her poem:

Oaks that the Indian's bow and wigwam knew, And by whose branches still the sky is barred.

I have a photograph of the famous King's Tavern, where Lafayette was entertained, and a small piece of the paper of the dining-room. This tavern was at Vernon, Connecticut, (now known as Rockville,) on the great Mail Stage route from New York to Boston. It was noted for its waffles, served night and morning, and the travellers sometimes called it "Waffle Tavern." It was erected by Lemuel King, in 1820. Now it is used as the Rockville town farm. The noted French wall-paper on the dining-room, where Lafayette was entertained, represented mythological scenes. There was Atlas, King of the remote West and master of the trees that bore the golden apples; and Prometheus, chained to the rock, with the water about him. The paper was imported in small squares, which had to be most carefully pasted together.

This treasured paper, with its rather solemn colors of grey and black, and its amazing number of mythological characters, was stripped from the walls and consumed in a bonfire by an unappreciative and ignorant person who had control of the place. A lady rescued a few pieces and pasted them on a board. She has generously sent me a photograph of one of the panels. She writes me pathetically of the woodsy scenes, water views, mountains, cascades, and castles, with cla.s.sic figures artistically arranged among them. There seems to have been a greater variety than is usual, from a spirited horse, standing on his hind legs on a cliff, to a charming nymph seated on a rock and playing on a lyre. Below all these scenes there was a dado of black and grey, with scrolls and names of the beings depicted--such names as Atlas, Atlantis, Ariadne, Arethusa, Adonis, Apollo, Andromache, Bacchus, Ca.s.sandra, Cadmus, Diana, Endymion, Juno, Jupiter, Iris, Laoc.o.o.n, Medusa, Minerva, Neptune, Pandora, Penelope, Romulus, Sirius, Thalia, Theseus, Venus, Vulcan, and many others were "among those present." Below these names came a dado of gra.s.sy green, with marine views at intervals.

Whether Lafayette noticed and appreciated all this, history telleth not.

After his sumptuous repast a new coach was provided to convey him from King's Tavern to Hartford, and it was drawn by four white horses.

On a boulder in Lafayette Park, near by, is this inscription:

"In grateful memory of General Lafayette, whose love of liberty brought him to our sh.o.r.es, to dedicate his life and fortune to the cause of the Colonies.

"The Sabra Trumbull Chapter, D. A. R., erected this monument near the Old King's Tavern, where he was entertained in 1824."

The General Knox mansion, called "Montpelier," at Thomaston, Maine, is full of interest to all who care for old-time luxury as seen in the homes of the wealthy. General Knox was Was.h.i.+ngton's first Secretary of War. Samples of paper have been sent me from there. One had a background of sky-blue, on which were wreaths, with torches, censers with flames above, and two loving birds, one on the nest and the mate proudly guarding her--all in light brown and gray, with some sparkling mineral or tiniest particles of gla.s.s apparently sprinkled over, which produced a fascinating glitter, and a raised, applique effect I have never observed before. This was on the dining-room of the mansion. In the "gold room" was a yellow paper--as yellow as b.u.t.tercups.

Still another, more unusual, was a representation of a sea-port town, Gallipoli, of European Turkey; armed men are marching; you see the water and picturesque harbor, and Turkish soldiers in boats. The red of the uniforms brightens the pictures; the background is gray, and the views are enclosed in harmonious browns, suggesting trees and rocks. This paper came in small pieces, before rolls were made. Think of the labor of matching all those figures! "Gallipoli" is printed at the bottom.

I am a.s.sured by a truthful woman from Maine that the halls of this house were adorned with yellow paper with hunting scenes "life-size," and I don't dare doubt or even discuss this, for what a woman from that state _knows_ is not to be questioned. It can't be childish imagination.

Moreover, I have corroborative evidence from another veracious woman in the South, who, in her childhood, saw human figures of "life size" on a paper long since removed.

I freely confess that I had never heard of this distinguished General Knox and his palatial residence; but a composition from a little girl was shown me, which gives a good idea of the house:

THE KNOX MANSION.

"In the year 1793, General Knox sent a party of workmen from Boston to build a summer residence on the bank of the Georges River. The mansion was much like a French chateau, and was often so called by visitors.

"The front entrance faced the river. The first story was of brick, and contained the servants' hall, etc. The second floor had nine rooms, the princ.i.p.al of which was the oval room, into which the main entrance opened. There were two large windows on either side of the door, and on opposite sides were two immense fire-places. This room was used as a picture gallery, and contained many ancient portraits. It had also a remarkable clock. It was high, and the case was of solid mahogany. The top rose in three points and each point had a bra.s.s ball on the top. The face, instead of the usual Roman numbers, had the Arabic 1, 2, 3, etc.

There were two small dials. On each side of the case were little windows, showing the machinery. Between the two windows on one side of the room was a magnificent mahogany book-case, elaborately trimmed with solid silver, which had belonged to Louis XIV. and was twelve feet long.

"The mansion measured ninety feet across, and had on either side of the oval room two large drawing-rooms, each thirty feet long. There were twenty-eight fire-places in the house. Back of the western drawing-room was a library. This was furnished with beautiful books of every description, a large number being French. On the other side was a large china closet. One set of china was presented to General Knox by the Cincinnati Society. The ceiling was so high that it was necessary to use a step-ladder to reach the china from the higher shelves. Back of the oval room was a pa.s.sage with a flight of stairs on each side, which met at the top. Above, the oval room was divided into two dressing-rooms.

The bedsteads were all solid mahogany, with silk and damask hangings.