•LA
k^. *&r '
1
1
i
t ft:
•
•
.
'
ART
vy'd
/ME:
r
Y45.f>4 S iborn , Kc! '.I t ime wa 1 1 paper
LIBRARIES
3 3333 12577 5318
The New\brk Public Library
Astor. Lenox and Tilden Foundations
CD
C-J
The Branch Libraries MID-MANHATTAN LIBRARY
Art Collection 455 Fifth Avenue New York, N.Y. 10016
MM ART
B
n F s n
/ d c
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Reference use only
DO NOT REMOVE FROM THE
LIBRARY
THIS BOOK IS FOR REFERENCE USE ONLY AND MAY NOT BE TAKEN FROM THE ROOM
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
WE HAVE PRINTED 75 SIGNED AND NUMBERED COPIES OF THIS BOOK. ON FRENCH JAPAN PAPER, AND 975 NUMBERED COPIES ON AMERICAN PLATE PAPER. THE TYPE HAS BEEN DISTRIBUTED. NUMBER
'
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
AN ACCOUNT OF THE PICTORIAL PAPERS ON OUR FOREFATHERS' WALLS
WITH A STUDY OF THE
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF WALL PAPER MAKING AND DECORATION
KATE-SANBORN
GREENWICH; C^N'SivC'I K I '
THE LITERARY 'COLLECTO'R TRESS
\K\V YORK 1905
CLIFFORD & LAWTON
ig UNION SQUARE WEST, NEW YORK CITY SOLE
A J
Copyright, 1905 BY KATE SANBORN
H>? oc,
TO
A. S. C.
THE CHATELAINE OF ELM BANK
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
IF a book has ever been written on this subject it has been impossible to discover ; and to get reliable facts
for a history of the origin and development of the art of making wall-papers has been a serious task, although the result seems scanty and superficial. Some friends may wonder at the lack of fascinating bits of gossip, stories of rosy romance and somber tragedy in connection with these papers. But those who chatted, danced, flirted, wept or plotted in the old rooms are long since dust, and although the "very walls have ears" they have not the gift of speech. But my collection of photographs is something entirely unique and will increase in value every year. The numerous photographers, to whom I have never appealed in vain, are regarded by me as not only a skillful but a saintly class of men.
I am greatly indebted to Miss Mary M. Brooks of Salem and Miss Mary H. Buckingham of Boston for professional assistance. Many others have most kindly helped me by offers of photographs and interesting facts
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
concerning the papers and their histories. But I am especially indebted to Mrs. Frederick C. Bursch, who has given much of her time to patient research, to the veri- fication or correction of doubtful statements, and has accomplished a difficult task in arranging and describing the photographs. Without her enthusiastic and skillful assistance, my collection and text would have lacked method and finish.
To the many, both acquaintances and strangers, who have volunteered assistance and have encouraged when discouragement was imminent, sending bracing letters and new-old pictures, I can only quote with heartfelt thanks the closing lines of the verse written by Foote, the English actor, to be posted conspicu- ously to attract an audience to his benefit—
Like a grate fall of coals I Ml glow
A great full house to see ; And if I am not grateful, too, A great fool I shall be.
p York Public Libra* -Manhattan Library
CONTENTS
I Page
FROM MUD WALLS AND CANVAS TENTS TO DECORATIVE
PAPERS i
II
PROGRESS AND IMPROVEMENT IN THE ART 23
III
EARLIEST WALL PAPERS IN AMERICA 41
IV
WALL PAPERS IN HISTORIC HOMES 61
V
NOTES FROM HERE AND THERE 8;
VI
REVIVAL AND RESTORATION OF OLD WALL PAPERS 103
LIST OF PLATES AND ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATES
Old English Figure paper — in Colors.
Rural Scenes — Detail in Colors.
French paper, Watteau Style — Detail in Colors.
Adventures of a Gallant — Reduction.
Adventures of a Gallant — Detail in Colors.
Racing paper — Timothy Dexter House.
The Bayeux Tapestry — Burial of Edward.
The Bayeux Tapestry — Harold hearing News.
Oldest English paper- - Borden Hall, "A."
Borden Hall paper, Design " B."
Early English Pictorial paper — Chester, Eng.
Old Chinese paper, Cultivation of Tea — Dedham,
Mass. XII-XIV
Early American fresco-- Westwood, Mass. XV-XVIII
Plate I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
Early Stencilled paper — Nantucket, Mass. XIX
A Peep at the Moon — Nantucket, Mass. XX
Hand-colored Figures, repeated — Claremont, N. H. XXI Nature Scenes, repeated — Salem, Mass. XXII
The Alhambra, repeated — Leicester, Mass. XXIII
Cathedral Views, repeated — Ware, Mass. XXIV
Cathedral Views, repeated on architectural back- ground— Waltham, Mass. XXV Pictured Ruins, Hall and Stairway — Salem, Mass. XXVI Birds of Paradise and Peacocks — Waltham, Mass. XXVII Sacred to Washington — Mourning paper. XXVIII Dorothy Quincy Wedding paper — Quincy, Mass. XXIX The Pantheon — King's Tavern, Vernon, Conn. XXX Canterbury Bells — Wayside Inn, Sudbury, Mass. XXXI The First Railway Locomotive — Salem, Mass. XXXII Rural Scene from same room. XXXIII Pizarro in Peru — Duxbury, Mass. XXXIV-V Tropical Scenes — Peabody, Mass. XXXVI-VII On the Bosporus — Montpelier, Vt. XXXVIII-IX Oriental Scenes — Stockport, N. Y. XL-XLIII Early Nineteenth Century Scenic paper -
Deerneld, Mass. XLIV-V
Same Scenic paper, other examples — Warner,
N. H., and Windsor, Vt. XLVI-VII
Harbor Scene — Waterford, Vt., Gilmanton,
N. H., and Rockville, Mass. XLVIII
The Spanish Fandango — same paper. XLIX
Strolling Players — same paper. L
LIST OF PLATES AND ILLUSTRATIONS
Rural Scenes — Ashland, Mass., and Marblehead. LI, LII French Boulevard Scenes — Salem, Mass., and
Nantucket, Mass. LIII, LIV
Gateway and Fountain, with Promenaders. LV
Scenes from Paris — Salem, Mass., etc. LVI, LVTI
Bay of Naples — Hanover, N. H., etc. LVIII-LXII
Cupid and Psyche — panelled paper. LXIII, LXIV
The Adventures of Telemachus - -Taunton,
Mass., etc. LXV-IX
Scottish Scenes — same paper. LXX
The Olympic Games — Boston, Mass. LXXI
A tribute to Homer — same paper. LXXII
The shrine of Vesta — same paper. LXXI II
Worship of Athene — same paper. LXXIV
Oblation to Bacchus — same paper. LXXV
Oblation to Bacchus and Procession before Pan- theon— Keene, N. H. LXXVI The Lady of the Lake -- Greenbush, Mass.,
and Portsmouth, N. H. LXXVII-LXXX
The Seasons— Hanover, N. H. LXXXI-III
ILLUSTRATIONS. Devil paper, Gore Mansion, Waltham, Mass. See
end papers.
Devil paper, details, Pages viii, 19, 6 1
Mill and Boat Landing — Fairbanks House, Ded-
ham, Mass. vii
Gallipoli Scenes — Knox Mansion, Thomaston,
Me. ix, 23, 103
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
xi, 1 1 6
x
xi
Adventures of Cupid — Beverly, Mass.
Fisher Maidens — Draper House, N. H.
Peasant Scene.
Hunters and Dog.
The Gypsies — Stevens House, Methuen, Mass.
Bandbox (Stage-coach) and Cover — Spencer, Mass.
The Grape Harvest.
Torches and Censers- -Thomaston, Me.
Bandbox, Volunteer Fire Brigade — Norwich, Conn. 58
Chariot Race — Detail of Olympic Games paper. 85
Horse Race — Newburyport, Mass. 100
xiv
20
37 38
I
FROM MUD WALLS AND CANVAS TENTS TO DECORATIVE PAPERS
fROPERTY OF THE GUY UP NEW YURK.
I
FROM MUD WALLS AND CANVAS TENTS TO DECORATIVE PAPERS
HOW very interesting ! Most attractive and quite unique ! I supposed all such old papers had gone long ago. Ho\v did you happen to think of such an odd subject, and how ever could you find so many fine old specimens? Do you know where the very first wall-paper was made?"
These are faint echoes of the questions suggested by my collection of photographs of wall-papers of the past. The last inquiry, which I was unable to answer, stimulated me to study, that I might learn some- thing definite as to the origin and development of the art of making such papers.
Before this, when fancying I had found a really new theme, I was surprised to discover that every one, from Plato and Socrates to Emerson, Ruskin and Spen- cer, had carefully gleaned over the same ground, until the amount of material became immense and unmanage- able. Not so now. I appealed in vain to several public libraries; they had nothing at all on the subject. Poole's
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
Index — that precious store-house of information — was consulted, but not one magazine article on my theme could be found. I then sent to France, England and Italy, and employed professional lookers-up of difficult topics ; but little could be secured. The few who had studied paper hangings were very seldom confident as to positive dates and facts.
One would seem safe in starting with China, as paper was certainly invented there, and many of the earliest designs were of Chinese scenes ; but the honor is also claimed for Japan and Persia and Egypt. It is difficult to decide in view of the varying testimony.
I was assured by a Japanese expert, who consulted a friend for the facts, that neither the Chinese nor the Japanese have ever used paper to cover their walls. At the present day, the inner walls of their houses are plas- tered white, and usually have a strip of white paper run- ning around the bottom, about a foot and a half high.
On the other hand, Clarence Cook, in his book, What Shall We Do With Our Walls?, published in 1880, says as to the origin of wall-paper : " It may have been one of the many inventions borrowed from the East, and might be traced, like the introduction of porcelain, to the Dutch trade with China and Japan." And he finds that the Japanese made great use of paper, their walls being lined with this material, and the divisions between the rooms made largely, if not entirely, by means of screens covered with paper or silk. Japanese wall-paper does not come in rolls like ours, but in pieces, a little longer than broad, and of different sizes. He adds:
" What makes it more probable that our first Euro- pean notion of wall-papers came from Japan, is the fact
m
'
.
BBR
PLATE II.
One of the cruder papers popular a hundred years ago ; containing three groups of figures engaged in rural occu- pations. Beside the gray ground this paper contains eleven shades of color, roughly applied, with little atten- tion paid to register.
•t
,
.ii
.bnurf £ iBluq> o e»fh to
-?)j-i ni to-;-., •) aquoig a^irf
, airlj i v;J5i§ 3fil sir
biv/ tb3i ,-oIoo'lv
•
MUD WALLS TO DECORATIVE PAPERS
that the first papers made in Holland and then intro- duced into England and France, were printed in these small sizes [about three feet long by fifteen inches wide]. Nor was it until some time in the eighteenth century that the present mode of making long rolls was adopted. These early wall-papers were printed from blocks, and were only one of many modifications and adaptations of the block printing which gave us our first books and our first wood-cuts.
" The printing of papers for covering walls is said to have been introduced into Spain and Holland about the middle of the sixteenth century. And I have read, somewhere, that this mode of printing the patterns on small pieces of paper was an imitation of the Spanish squares of stamped and painted leather with which the grandees of Spain covered their walls, a fashion that spread all over Europe.
" We are told that wall-paper was first used in Europe as a substitute for the tapestry so commonly em- ployed in the middle ages, partly as a protection against the cold and damp of the stone walls of the houses, partly, no doubt, as an, ornament."
But here is something delightfully positive from A. Blanchet's Essai sur L' Histoire du Papier et de sa Fabri- cation, Exposition retrospective de la Papetier, Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1900.
Blanchet says that paper was invented in China by Tsai Loon, for purposes of writing. He used fibres of bark, hemp, rags, etc. In 105 A. D. he reported to the government on his process, which was highly approved. He was given the honorary title of Marquis and other honors. The first paper book was brought to Japan
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
from Corea, then a part of China, in 285. The con- quest of Turkestan by the Arabs, through which they learned the manufacture of paper, came in the battle fought on the banks of the River Tharaz, in July, 751. Chinese captives brought the art to Samarcand, from which place it spread rapidly to other parts of the Arabian Empire. Damascus was one of the first places to receive it. In Egypt, paper began to take the place of papyrus in the ninth century, and papyrus ceased to be used in the tenth. The Arabian paper was made of rags, chiefly linen, and sized with wheat starch. Euro- pean paper of the thirteenth century shows, under the microscope, fibres of rlax and hemp, with traces of cot- ton. About 1400, animal glue was first used for sizing. The common belief that Arabian and early European paper was made of cotton is a mistake. There has never been any paper made of raw cotton, and cotton paper anywhere is exceptional. In 1145, when the troops of Abd el Mounin were about to attack the capi- tal of Fez, the inhabitants covered the vault of the mihrab of the mosque with paper, and put upon this a coating of plaster, in order to preserve from destruction the fine carvings which are still the admiration of visi- tors. The mihrab of an Arabic mosque is a vaulted niche or alcove, in which the altar stands and towards which the worshippers look while they pray. This is probably the earliest approach to the use of wall-paper and shows the excellent quality of the paper.
Herbert Spencer states that " Dolls, blue-books, paper-hangings are lineally descended from the rude sculpture paintings in which the Egyptians represented the triumphs and worship of their god-kings." No
MUD WALLS TO DECORATIVE PAPERS
doubt this is true, but the beginning of paper, and prob- ably of wall-paper, was in China.
Paper made of cotton and other vegetable fibres by the Chinese was obtained by the Arabs in trade, through Samarcand. When they captured that city, in 704 A.D. they learned the process from Chinese captives there, and soon spread it over their empire. It was known as " Charta Damascena" in the Middle Ages, and was ex- tensively made also in Northern Africa. The first paper made in Europe was manufactured by the Moors in Spain, at Valencia, Toledo, and Xativa. At the decline of Moorish power, the Christians took it up, but their work was not so good. It was introduced into Italy through the Arabs in Sicily ; and the Laws of Alphonso, 1263, refer to it as "cloth parchment." The earliest documents on this thick "cotton" paper date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as a deed of King Roger of Sicily, dated i 102, shows. When made fur- ther north, other materials, such as rags and flax, were used. The first mention of rag paper, in a tract of Peter, Abbott of Cluny from 1122 to 1150, probably means woolen. Linen paper was not made until in the fourteenth century.
The Oriental papers had no water mark, — which is really a wire mark. Water-mark paper originated in the early fourteenth century, when paper-making be- came an European industry ; and a considerable interna- tional trade can be traced by means of the water marks.
The French Encyclopaedia corroborates Blanchet's statement that the common notion that the Arabic and early European papers were made of cotton is a mistake ; the microscope shows rag and flax fibres in the earliest.
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS Frederic Aumonier says : " From the earliest times
J
man has longed to conceal the baldness of mud walls, canvas tents or more substantial dwellings, by something of a decorative character. Skins of animals, the trophies of the chase, were probably used by our remote ances- tors for ages before wall-paintings and sculptures were thought of. The extreme antiquity of both of these latter methods of wall decoration has recently received abundant confirmation from the valuable work done by the Egyptian Research Department, at Hierakonopolis, where wall-paintings have been discovered in an ancient tomb, the date of which has not yet been determined, but which is probably less than seven thousand years old ; and by the discovery of ancient buildings under the scorching sand dunes of the great Sahara, far away from the pres- ent boundary line of habitable and cultivated land. The painted decorations on the walls of some of the rooms in these old-world dwellings have been preserved by the dry sand, and remain almost as fresh as they were on the day they left the hand of the artist, whose bones have long since been resolved into their native dust."
From the Encyclopaedia Britannica I condense the long article on "Mural Decoration":
There is scarcely one of the numerous branches of decorative art which has not at some time or other been applied to the ornamentation of wall-surfaces.
I. Reliefs sculptured in marble or stone ; the old- est method of wall decoration.
II. Marble veneer; the application of thin marble linings to wall surfaces, these linings often being highly variegated.
III. Wall linings of glazed bricks or tiles. In the
MUD WALLS TO DECORATIVE PAPERS
eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Moslems of Persia brought their art to great perfection and used it on a large scale, chiefly for interiors. In the most beautiful specimens, the natural growth of trees and flowers is imitated. About 1600 A. D., this art was brought to highest perfection.
IV. Wall coverings of hard stucco, frequently en- riched with relief and further decorated with delicate paintings in gold and colors, as at the Alhambra at Granada and the Alcazar at Seville.
V. Sgraffito ; a variety of stucco work used chiefly in Italy, from the sixteenth century down. A coat of stucco is made black by admixture of charcoal. Over this a second very thin coat of white stucco is laid. The drawing is made to appear in black on a white ground, by cutting away the white skin enough to show the black undercoat.
VI. Stamped leather ; magnificent and expensive, used during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in Italy, Spain, France, and later in England.
VII. Painted cloth. In King Henry IV., FalstafF says his soldiers are " slaves, as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth." Canvas, painted to imitate tapestry, was used both for ecclesiastical and domestic hangings. Eng- lish mediaeval inventories contain such items as " stayned cloth for hangings"; " paynted cloth with stories and batailes" ; and "paynted cloths of beyond-sea-work." The most important existing example is the series of paintings of the Triumph of Julius Caesar, now in Hampton Court. These designs were not meant to be executed in tapestry, but were complete as wall-hang- ings. Godon, in Peinture sur Toile, says : " The painted
7
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
canvasses kept at the Hotel Dieu at Rheims were done in the fifteenth century, probably as models for woven tapestries. They have great artistic merit. The sub- jects are religious." Painted cloths were sometimes dyed in a manner similar to those Indian stuffs which were afterwards printed and are now called chintzes. It is recorded somewhere, that the weaving industry was es- tablished at Mulhouse (Rixheim) by workers who left Rheims at a time when laws were passed there to restrict the manufacture of painted cloths, because there was such a rage for it that agriculture and other necessary arts were neglected.
VIII. Printed hangings and wall-papers. The printing of various textiles with dye-colors and mordaunts is probably one of the most ancient of the arts. Pliny describes a dyeing process employed by the ancient Egyptians, in which the pattern was probably formed by printing from blocks. The use of printed stuffs is of great antiquity among the Hindus and Chinese, and was practised in Western Europe in the thirteenth century, and perhaps earlier. The South Kensington Museum has thirteenth-century specimens of block-printed linen made in Sicily, with beautiful designs. Later, toward the end of the fourteenth century, a great deal of block- printed linen was made in Flanders and was imported largely into England.
Tapestries as wall-hangings were used in the earliest times, and, as tiles and papers were copied from them, they must be spoken of here. One remarkable example of tapestry from a tomb in the Crimea is sup- posed by Stephani to date from the fourth century before Christ. Homer frequently describes tapestry
MUD WALLS TO DECORATIVE PAPERS
hangings, as when he alludes to the cloth of purple wool with a hunting scene in gold thread, woven by Penelope for LHysses. Plutarch, in his Life of Themistocles, says, " Speech is like cloth of Arras, opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs."
The oldest tapestry now in existence is the set of pieces known as the Bayeux Tapestry, preserved in the library at Bayeux, near Caen, in France, and said to be the work of Matilda, Queen of William the Conqueror. These pieces measure two hundred and thirty-one feet long and twenty inches wide.
It is generally believed, and stated as a fact in the various guide-books, that the Bayeux Tapestry was the work of Queen Matilda, the consort of the Conqueror, assisted by her ladies. At that time, English ladies were renowned for their taste and skill in embroidery. Their work was known throughout Europe as English work. The Conquest having brought the people of Normandy and England into close intercourse, it is pointed out that on William's return to France, he must have taken with him many Saxons, with their wives and daughters, in honorable attendance upon him ; and that these ladies might have helped Matilda and her companions in making this historical piece of needlework. Many his- torians, however, incline to the opinion that Matilda and her ladies had nothing to do with the tapestry, although it was done during her lifetime.
It is amusing to note how Miss Strickland, in her Lives of the ^ifeens of England, takes up the cudgels in a very vigorous manner on behalf of Matilda's claim:
" The archaeologists and antiquaries would do well
9
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
to direct their intellectual powers to more masculine objects of enquiry, and leave the question of the Bayeux Tapestry (with all other matters allied to needle-craft) to the decision of the ladies, to whose province it be- longs. It is a matter of doubt whether one out of the many gentlemen who have disputed Matilda's claim to that work, if called upon to execute a copy of either of the figures on canvas, would know how to put in the first stitch."
But Dr. Daniel Rock, in his exhaustive work on Tapestries, casts the gravest doubts upon the tradition that this needlework owed its origin to Matilda and her ladies : " Had such a piece anywise or ever belonged to William's wife, we must think that, instead of being let stray away to Bayeux, toward which place she bore no particular affection, she would have bequeathed it, like other things, to her beloved church at Caen."
The author points out that there is no mention of the tapestry in the Queen's will, while two specimens of English needlework, a chasuble and a vestment, are left to the Church of the Trinity at Caen, the beautiful edifice founded by her at the time when her husband founded the companion church of St. Etienne in the same city. In fact, Dr. Rock thinks the tapestry was made in London, to the order of three men quite un- known to fame, whose names appear more than once on the tapestry itself. Coming over with the Conqueror, they obtained wide possessions in England, as appears from the Doomsday Book, and would naturally have wished to make a joint offering to the cathedral of their native city. In support of this view, it is shown that the long strip of needlework exactly fits both sides of
10
MUD WALLS TO DECORATIVE PAPERS
the nave of the cathedral at Bayeux, where until recent times it has hung.
The tapestry has undergone so many vicissitudes that it is a matter for wonder that it has been preserved in such good condition for eight hundred years. At one time it was exhibited at the Hotel de Ville, at Bayeux, fixed panorama-fashion on two rollers, so that it was at the disposal of the fingers as well as the eyes of the curious. When Napoleon was thinking of invading this country, he had the tapestry carried to the various towns of France and publicly exhibited, so as to arouse popular enthusiasm on behalf of his designs.
In 1871, when the Prussians were thought to be in dangerous proximity to Bayeux, the tapestry was taken down, enclosed in a metal cylinder, and buried in a secret place until the close of the war. Now it is kept in the Public Library in an upright glass case, which forms the sides of a hollow parallelogram, the tapestry being carried first round the outside and then round the inside space, so that every part of it is open to inspec- tion, while it cannot be touched or mutilated. This valuable information is given by Mr. T. C. Hepworth.
In the Old Testament we find records of "hangings of fine twined linen " and " hangings of white cloth, of green, of blue, fastened with cords of fine linen and pur- ple." Shakespeare has several allusions to tapestry: as, "fly-bitten tapestry"; "worm-eaten tapestry"; "covered o'er with Turkish tapestry"; "the tapestry of my din- ing chambers "; "it was hanged with tapestry of silk"; "in cypress chests my arras"; "hangings all of Tyrian tapestry."
Cardinal Wolsey's private accounts and inventories,
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
still preserved, state that in 1552 he bought one hundred and thirty-two large pieces of Brussels tapestry, woven with Scriptural subjects and mostly made to order, so as to fit exactly the various wall spaces. Among the wall- pieces, " in addition to the numerous sacred subjects are mentioned mythological scenes, romances, historical pieces and hangings of verdure," the last being decora- tive work, in which trees and foliage formed the main design, with accessory figures engaged in hunting, hawk- ing and the like.
We read in Gibbon's Rome that Charles the Sixth despatched, by way of Hungary, Arras tapestry represent- ing the battles of the great Alexander. And Macaulay inquires, " Where were now the brave old hangings of Arras which had adorned the walls of lordly mansions in the days of Elizabeth ?"
According to Shakespeare, the arras was found con- venient to conceal eaves-droppers, those planning a frolic or plotting mischief ; or for a hasty lunch, as in The Woman Hater, by Beaumont and Fletcher :
I have of yore made many a scrambling meal, In corners, behind arrases, on stairs.
Arras was used precisely the same as a curtain ; it hung on tenters or lines from the rafters or from some temporary stay, and was opened, held up, or drawn aside, as occasion required. The writers of the day fre- quently mentioned these wall-hangings. Evelyn, in his diary, 1641, says, "We were conducted to the lodgings, tapestry'd with incomparable arras."
Scott, in The Lady of the Lake, has this couplet:
In vain on gilded roof they fall,
And lighten up a tapestried wall.
12
MUD WALLS TO DECORATIVE PAPERS
And in Waverley he speaks of "remnants of tapestried hangings, window curtains and shreds of pictures with which he had bedizened his tatters."
After the seventeenth century, these tapestries were used for covering furniture, as the seats and backs of sofas and arm chairs, desks and screens ; and fire-screens covered with tapestry as beautiful as a painting were in vogue. In the Comedy of Errors we recall this passage:
In the desk
That's covered o'er with Turkish tapestry There is a purse ot ducats.
Clarence Cook says: "There was a kind of tapestry made in Europe in the fifteenth century — in Flanders, probably — in which there were represented gentlemen and ladies, the chatelaine and her suite walking in the park of the chateau. The figures, the size of life, seem to be following the course of a slender stream. The park in which these noble folk are stifHy disporting is represented by a wide expanse of meadow, guiltless of perspective, stretching up to the top of the piece of stuff itself, a meadow composed of leaves and flowers — blue- bells, daisies, and flowers without a name — giving the effect of a close mosaic of green, mottled with colored spots. On the meadow are scattered various figures of animals and birds — the lion, the unicorn, the stag, and the rabbit. Here, too, are hawks and parrots; in the upper part is a heron, which has been brought down by a hawk and is struggling with the victor, some highly ornamental drops of blood on the heron's breast show- ing that he is done for. And to return to the brook which winds along the bottom of the tapestry, it is curious to note that this part of the work is more real
'3
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
and directly natural in its treatment than the rest. The water is blue, and is varied by shading and by lines that show the movement ot the stream ; the plants and bushes growing along its borders are drawn with at least a con- ventional look of life, some violets and fleur-de-lis being particularly well done; and in the stream itself are sail- ing several ducks, some pushing straight ahead, others nibbling the grass along the bank, and one, at least, div- ing to the bottom, with tail and feet in the air."
The best authority on tapestries in many lands is the exhaustive work by Muntz, published in Paris, 1878- 1884, by the Societe anonyme de Publication Periodique — three luxuriously bound and generously illustrated volumes, entitled Histoire Generate de la Tapisserie en Italie, en Allemagne, en Angleterre, en Espagne.
We learn here that in 1630 Le Francois, of Rouen, incited by the Chinese colored papers imported by the missionaries, tried to imitate the silk tapestries of the wealthy in a cheaper substance. He spread powdered wool of different colors on a drawing covered with a sticky substance on the proper parts. This papier ve/oufe, called tontisse by Le Francois, was exported to England, where it became known as "flock paper." The English claim a previous invention by Jeremy Lanyer, who, in 1634, had used Chinese and Japanese processes. At any rate, the manufacture of flock papers spread in England and was given up in France. Only toward the middle of the eighteenth century was the making of real col- ored papers (papier feints) begun in France and England. The first factory was set up in 1746, but the work was not extended further until 1780, when it was taken up by the brothers George and Frederic Echardt.
H
MUD WALLS TO DECORATIVE PAPERS
Chinese picture papers were imported into France by Dutch traders and used to decorate screens, desks, chimney-pieces, etc., as early as the end of the seven- teenth century. By the middle of the eighteenth, they were an important ornament of elegant interiors. In the list of the furniture given to Mile. Desmares by Mile. Damours, September 25, 1746, is a fire-screen of China paper, mounted on wood, very simple. On July 25, 1755, Lazare Duvaux delivered to Mine, de Brancas, to be sent to the Dauphiness, a sheet of China paper with very beautiful vases and flowers, for making which he charged thirty livres. April 6, 1756, he sold to the Countess of Valentinois, for one hundred and forty-four livres, six sheets of China paper, painted on gauze with landscapes and figures.
May 8, 1770, M. Marin advertised for sale in a Paris newspaper twenty-four sheets of China paper, with figures and gilt ornaments, ten feet high and three and one-half feet wide, at twenty-four livres a sheet ; to be sold all together, or in lots of eight sheets each. By this time whole rooms were papered. July 15, 1779, an apartment in Paris was advertised to let, having a pretty boudoir with China paper in small figures repre- senting arts and crafts, thirteen sheets, with a length of thirty-seven feet (horizontally) and height of eight feet ten inches, with gilt beaded moulding. Dec. 31, 1781, " For sale, at M. Nicholas's, China wall-paper, glazed, blue ground, made for a room eighteen feet square, with gilt moulding."
Mr. Aumonier says: "Notwithstanding the Chinese reputation for printing from wooden blocks from time immemorial, no specimens of their work produced by
15
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
that process have ever come under the notice of the author, in public museums or elsewhere, and it is far more probable that early Chinese works imported into Europe were painted by hand, in imitation of the wondrous needlework, for which, through unknown ages, the Eastern peoples have been famous. A most perfect and beautiful example of this work, of Japanese origin, may be seen in the "Queen's palace at the Hague," called the Huis-en-ten-Bosch — the House-in- the-Wood. This is a magnificent composition of foliage and flowers, birds and butterflies, perfect in form and beauty of tint, worked in silks on a ground of ecru satin. It is composed of many breadths forming one picture, starting from the ground with rock-work, and finishing at the top of the wall with light sprays of flowers, birds, butterflies and sky ; the colouring of the whole so judi- ciously harmonized as to be an object lesson of great value to any decorator, and worth traveling many miles to study."
I think that we may now safely say that China holds the honors in this matter. And as most of us grow a bit weary of continuous citations from cyclope- dias, which are quoted because there is nothing less didactic to quote, and there must be a historical basis to stand on and start from, let us wander a little from heavy tomes and see some of the difficulties encountered in looking up old wall-papers to be photographed.
An American artist, who has made his home in Paris for years, looked over the photographs already col- lected, grew enthusiastic on the subject, and. was certain he could assist me, for, at the Retrospective Exhibition held in that city in 1900, he remembered having seen a
16
MUD WALLS TO DECORATIVE PAPERS
complete exhibition of wall-papers and designs from the beginning. Of course the dailies and magazines of that season would have full reports. " Just send over to Jack Cauldwell — you know him. He is now occupying my studio, and he will gladly look it up."
I wrote, and waited, but never received any response; heard later that he was painting in Algiers and appar- ently all the hoped-for reports had vanished with him. My famously successful searcher after the elusive and re- condite gave up this fruitless hunt in despair. Other friends in Paris were appealed to, but could find nothing.
Then many told me, with confidence, that there must be still some handsome old papers in the mansions of the South. And I did my best to secure at least some bits of paper, to show what had been, but I believe nearly all are gone " down the back entry of time."
One lady, belonging to one of the best old families of Virginia, writes me, " My brother has asked me ot write to you about wall-papers. I can only recall one instance of very old or peculiar papering in the South, and my young cousin, who is a senior in the Columbia School of Architecture and very keen on ' Colonial ' de- tails, tells me that he only knows of one. He has just been through tide-water Virginia, or rather, up the James and Rappahannock rivers, and he says those houses are all without paper at all, as far as he knows.
"At Charlestown, West Virginia, there is a room done in tapestry paper in classic style, the same pattern being repeated, but this is not old, being subsequent to 1840. The room that I have seen is wainscoted, as is the one at Charlestown, and has above the wainscoting a tapestry paper also in shades of brown on a white ground.
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
"The principal wall has a large classical design, with columns, ships and figures, not unlike the Turner picture of Carthage, as I remember it. This picture is not repeated, but runs into others. Whether each is a panel, or they are merged into one another by foliage, I am unable to recall. I know that there is a stag hunt and some sylvan scenes. It seemed as if the paper must have been made with just such a room in mind, as the patterns seemed to fit the spaces. As the room was the usual corner parlor common to Southern mansions, it was probably made for the type. I was told by a boarder in this house that the paper was old and there were similar papers in Augusta County. I do not know whether these are choice and rare instances, or whether they are numerous and plentiful in other sections."
All my responses from the South have been cordial and gracious and interesting, but depressing.
I hear, in a vague way, of papers that I really should have — in Albany and Baltimore. We all know of the papers in the Livingston and Jumel mansions; the for- mer are copied for fashionable residences.
I heard of some most interesting and unusual papers in an old house in Massachusetts, and after struggling along with what seemed almost insurmountable hin- drances, was at last permitted to secure copies. The owner of the house died ; the place was to be closed for six months; then it was to be turned over to the church, tor a parsonage, and I agonised lest one paper might be removed at once as a scandalous presentment of an unholy theme. I was assured that in it the Devil himself was caught at last, by three revengeful women, who, in a genuine tug-of-war scrimmage, had torn away all of his
18
'
PLATE III.
In abrupt contrast with the preceding specimen, this old French paper is printed with great care and shows high artistic taste. The eight well-composed groups of fig- ures that form the complete design are after the manner of Watteau; the coloring is rich but quiet. Seventeen shades and colors were imposed on a brown ground, and the black mesh-work added over all.
I
.
-
:
'
i
rfliv/
jwoffe bru; -sniio r h^Jnhq ai isqsq rfona
-§ri .-rfgia srfT .aiaBJ oil«T
•-icm 3ib itjf.tB t>lB ugfeb aJalqmoo 3f{j rmol Jcrfj asm •,-t,'ip Jirtf^i ;} jHBSJJfiW 'to
bnB .brufcru' ftv/otd i; no bsaoqnn ^isv/ aiofoo b:r
.Iff IdVO J. 107/-H83IT
•
I
I
MUD WALLS TO DECORATIVE PAPERS
tail but a stub end. Finally I gained a rather grudging permit for my photographer to copy the papers — "if you will give positive assurance that neither house nor walls shall be injured in the slightest degree."
As the artist is a quiet gentleman — also an absolute abstainer — so that I could not anticipate any damage from a rough riot or a Bacchanalian revel, I allowed him to cross the impressive threshold of the former home of a Massachusetts governor, and the result was a brilliant achievement, as may be seen in the end papers of this book.
Sometimes when elated by a promise that a certain paper, eagerly desired, could be copied, I sent my man only to have the door held just a bit open, while he heard the depressing statement that madam had " changed her mind and didn't want the paper to be taken."
All this is just a reminder that it is not entirely easy to get at what is sure so soon to disappear. And I mourn that I did not think years ago of securing photo- graphs of quaint and antique papers.
Man has been denned as "an animal who collects." There is no hobby more delightful, and in this hunt I feel that I am doing a real service to many who have not time to devote to the rather difficult pursuit of what will soon be only a remembrance of primitive days.
'9
'.^Si
;^iR.
»- -
•<•
2ftf^-WJ» -#' J3T1 Kw aP»^r^.*^
^4^t-^Ci
|r» • -&
II
PROGRESS AND IMPROVEMENT IN THE ART
II
PROGRESS AND IMPROVEMENT IN THE ART
IF WE go far enough back in trying to decide the origin of almost any important discovery, we are sure to tind many claimants for the honor. It is said, on good authority, that " paper-hangings for the walls of rooms were originally introduced in China." This may safely be accepted as correct. The Chinese certainly discovered how to make paper, then a better sort for wall hangings, and by Chinese prisoners it was carried to Arabia. Travellers taking the news of the art to their homes in various countries, it soon became a subject of general interest, and variations and inventions in paper manufacture were numerous.
We are apt to forget how much we owe to the Chinese nation — the mariners' compass, gun-powder, paper, printing by moveable types (a daily paper has been published in Pekin for twelve hundred years, printed, too, on silk). They had what we call The Golden Rule rive hundred years before Christ was born. With six times the population of the United States, they are the
23
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
only people in the world who have maintained a govern- ment for three thousand years.
The earliest papers we hear ot anywhere were im- ported from China, and had Chinese or Indian patterns; coming first in small sheets, then in rolls. Some of the more elahorate kinds were printed by hand ; others were printed from blocks. These papers, used for walls, for hangings, and for screens, were called "pagoda papers," and were decorated with flowers, symbolic animals and human figures.
The Dutch were among the most enterprising, im- porting painted hangings from China and the East about the middle of the sixteenth century. Perhaps these origi- nated in Persia; the word "chintz" is of Persian origin, and the French name for its imitations was " perses."
From the Dutch, these imported hangings were soon carried to England, France, Germany and other Conti- nental nations. Each nation was deadly jealous in regard to paper-making, even resorting, in Germany in 1390, to solemn vows of secrecy from the workman and threats of imprisonment for betrayal of methods. Two or three centuries later, the Dutch prohibited the exportation of moulds under no less a penalty than death.
The oldest allusion to printed wall-papers that I have found is in an account of the trial, in 1568, of a Dutch printer, Herman Schinkel of Delft, on the charge of printing books inimical to the Catholic faith. The examination showed that Schinkel took ballad paper and printed roses and stripes on the back of it, to be used as a covering for attic walls.
In the Library of the British Museum may be seen a book, printed in Low Dutch, made of sixty specimens
PROGRESS AND IMPROVEMENT
of paper, each of a different material. The animal and vegetable products of which the workmen of various countries tried to manufacture paper would make a sur- prising list. In England, a paper-mill was set up prob- ably a century before Shakespeare's time. In the second part of Henry the Si\t/i is a reference to a paper-mill.
About 1745, the Campagnie des Indes began to import these papers directly. They were then also called "Indian" papers. August 21, 1784, we rind an adver- tisement: "For sale — 20 sheets of India paper, repre- senting the cultivation of tea."
Such a paper, with this same theme, was brought to America one hundred and rifty years ago — a hand- painted Chinese wall-paper, which has been on a house in Dedham ever since, and is to-day in a very good state of preservation. Of this paper I give three reproduc- tions from different walls of the room.
In Le Mercure, June, 1753, M. Prudomme adver- tised an assortment of China paper of different sizes; and again, in May, 1758, that he had received many very beautiful India papers, painted, in various sizes and grounds, suitable for many uses, and including every kind that could be desired. This was the same thing that was called "China" paper five years before.
The great development of the home manufacture of wall-papers, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, put an end to the importation from China. The English were probably the first importers of these highly deco- rative Chinese papers, and quickly imitated them by printing the papers. These " fwpiers Anglais" soon became known on the Continent, and the French were also at work as rivals in their manufacture and use.
25
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
Of a book published in 1847, called The Laws of Harmonious Colouring, the author, one David R. Hay, was house painter and decorator to the Queen. I find that he was employed as a decorator and paper-hanger by Sir Walter Scott, and he says that Sir Walter directed everything personally. Mr. Hay speaks of a certain Indian paper, of crimson color, with a small gilded pat- tern upon it. "This paper Sir Walter did not quite approve of for a dining-room, but as he got it as a pres- ent, expressly for that purpose, and as he believed it to be rare, he would have it put up in that room rather than hurt the feelings of the donor. I observed to Sir Walter that there would be scarcely enough to cover the wall ; he replied in that case I might paint the recess for the side-board in imitation of oak." Mr. Hay found after- wards that there was quite enough paper, but Sir Walter, wrhen he saw the paper on the recess, heartily wished that the paper had fallen short, as he liked the recess much better unpapered. So in the night Mr. Hay took off the paper and painted the recess to look like paneled oak. This was in 1822.
Sir Walter, in a letter to a friend, speaks of "the most splendid Chinese paper, twelve feet high by four wide ; enough to finish the drawing-room and two bed- rooms, the color being green, with rich Chinese figures." Scott's own poem, The Lady of the Lake, has been a favorite theme for wall-paper.
Professor W. E. D. Scott, the Curator of Ornithol- ogy at Princeton College, in his recent book, The Story of a Bird Lover, alludes, in a chapter about his child- hood, to the papers on the walls of his grandfather's home: "As a boy, the halls interested me enormously;
26
PROGRESS AND IMPROVEMENT
they have been papered with such wall-paper as I have never seen elsewhere. The entrance hall portrayed a vista of Paris, apparently arranged along the Seine, with ladies and gentlemen promenading the banks, and all the notable buildings, the Pantheon, Notre Dame, and many more distributed in the scene, the river running in front.
" But it was when I reached the second story that my childish imagination was exercised. Here the pano- rama was of a different kind ; it represented scenes in India — the pursuit of deer and various kinds of smaller game, the hunting of the lion and the tiger by the the natives, perched on great elephants with mag- nificent trappings. These views are not duplicated in the wall-paper ; the scene is continuous, passing from one end of the hall to the other, a panorama rich in color and incident. I had thus in my mind a picture of India, I knew what kind of trees grew there, I knew the clothes people wore and the arms they used while hunting. To-day the same paper hangs in the halls of the old house."
There are several papers of this sort, distinctly Chinese, still on walls in this country. A house near Portsmouth, which once belonged to Governor Went- worth, has one room of such paper, put on about 1750. In Boston, in a Beacon Street house, there is a room adorned with a paper made to order in China, with a pattern of birds and flowers, in which there is no repeti- tion; and this is not an uncommon find. A brilliant example of this style may be seen in Salem, Mass.
Chinese papers, which were made for lining screens and covering boxes, were used in England and this coun- try for wall-papers, and imitated both there and here.
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
One expert tells me that the early English papers were often designed after India cottons, in large bold patterns.
The rirst use in France of wall-papers of French manufacture was in the sixth century. Vachon tells about Jehan Boudichon and his fifty rolls of paper for the King's bed-chamber in 1481, lettered and painted blue; but it is evident from the context that they were not fastened on the walls, but held as scrolls by figures of angels.
Colored papers were used for temporary decorations at this time, as at the entrance of Louis XIII. into Lyons, on July 17, 1507. There is nothing to show that the '•'•deux grans pans de papier paincts," contain- ing the history of the Passion, and of the destruction of Jerusalem from the effects of the cannon of St. Peter, were permanently applied to a wall. So with another painted paper, containing the genealogy of the Kings of France, among the effects of Jean Nagerel, archdeacon at Rouen in 1750. These pictured papers, hung up on the walls as a movable decoration, form one step in the development of applied wall-papers.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the com- monest patterns for unpictorial wall decoration were taken from the damasks and cut-velvets of Sicily, Florence, Genoa, and other places in Italy. Some form o± the pine-apple or artichoke pattern was the favorite, a design developed partly from Oriental sources and coming to perfection at the end of the fifteenth century, copied and reproduced in textiles, printed stuffs, and wall-papers, with but little change, down to the nineteenth century.
From the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. XVII, I quote again : " Wall-papers did not come into common
28
PROGRESS AND IMPROVEMENT
use in Europe until the eighteenth century, though they appear to have been used much earlier by the Chinese. A few rare examples exist in England, which may be as early as the eighteenth century ; these are imitations, generally in nock, of the fine old Florentine and Geno- ese cut-velvets, and hence the style of the design in no way shows the date of the paper, the same traditional patterns being reproduced for many years, with little or no change. Machinery enabling paper to be made in long strips was not invented till the end of the eight- eenth century, and up to that time wall-paper was painted on small squares of hand-made paper, difficult to hang, disfigured by joints, and consequently costly ; on this account wall-papers were slow in superseding the older modes of mural decoration, such as wood panelling, painting, tapestry, stamped leather, and printed cloth. A little work by Jackson, of Battersea, printed in London in 1 744, gives some light on papers used at that time. He gives reduced copies ol his designs, mostly taken from Italian pictures or antique sculpture during his resi- dence in Venice. Instead of flowering patterns cover- ing the walls, his designs are all pictures — landscapes, architectural scenes, or statues — treated as panels, with plain paper or painting between. They are all printed in oil, with wooden blocks worked with a rolling press, apparently an invention of his own. They are all in the worst possible taste, and yet are offered as an improve- ment on the Chinese papers then in vogue."
In 1586 there was in Paris a corporation called dowinotiers, domino makers, which had the exclusive right to manufacture colored papers ; and they were evi- dently not a new body. " Domino " was an Italian
29
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
word, used in Italy as early as the fifteenth century for marbled paper. French gentlemen, returning from Milan and Naples, brought back boxes or caskets lined with these papers, which were imitated in France and soon be- came an important article of trade. The foreign name was kept because of the prejudice in favor of foreign ar- ticles. But French taste introduced a change in the char- acter of the ornament, preferring symmetrical designs to the hap-hazard effect of the marbling. They began then to print with blocks various arabesques, and to fill in the outlines with the brush.
In Furetiere's Dictionary, of the last quarter of the seventeenth century, dominotier is defined, " workman who makes marbled paper and other papers of all colors and printed with various figures, which the people used to call 'dominos'."
On March 15, 1787, a decree of the French King's Council of State declared that the art of painting and printing paper to be used in furnishings was a dependence of the governing board of the " Marchatids-Papetiers- Dominotiere-Feuilletinere.
This domino-work was for a long time principally used by country folk and the humbler citizens of Paris to cover parts of their rooms and shops ; but near the end of the seventeenth century there was hardly a house in Paris, however magnificent, that did not have some place adorned with some of this domino-work, with flowers, fruits, animals and small human figures. These pictures were often arranged in compartments. The domino- tiers made paper tapestries also, and had the right to represent portraits, mythological scenes and Old and New Testament stories. At first they introduced written
3°
PROGRESS AND IMPROVEMENT
explanations, but the letter printers thought this an infringement of their rights; therefore it was omitted.
We are told by Aumonier that little precise infor- mation is to be found concerning the domino papers. " Some were made from blocks of pear-tree wood, with the parts to be printed left in relief, like type. The designs were small pictures and in separate sheets, each subject complete to itself. They were executed in print- ing-ink by means of the ordinary printing-press. Some were afterwards finished by hand in distemper colors ; others were printed in oil, gold-sized and dusted over with powdered colors, which gave them some resemblance to flock papers."
Much is said about flock paper, and many were the methods of preparing it. Here is one : " Flock paper, commonly called cloth paper, is made by printing the figures with an adhesive liquid, commonly linseed oil, boiled, or litharge. The surface is then covered with the flock, or woolen dust, which is produced in manu- factories by the shearing of woolen cloths, and which is dyed of the requisite colors. After being agitated in contact with the paper, the flocks are shaken off, leaving a coating resembling cloth upon the adhesive surface of the figures." The manufacture of this paper was prac- tised, both in England and France, early in the seven- teenth century. I find in the Oxford Dictionary the following examples of the early mention of flock cloth, which was the thing that suggested to Le Francois his invention of flock paper :
Act I of Richard III., C. 8, preamble: "The Sellers of such course Clothes, being bare of Threde, usen for to powder the cast Flokkys of fynner Cloth
3'
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
upon the same." Again in 1541, Act of Henry VIII., C. 18: "Thei — shall (not) make or stoppe any maner Kerseies with flocks."
" Flock, which is one of the most valuable materials used in paper staining, not only from its cost, but from its great usefulness in producing rich 'and velvety effects, is wool cut to a fine powder. The wool can be used in natural color or dyed to any tint. The waste from cloth manufactures furnished the chief supply, the white uniforms of the Austrian soldiery supplying a considerable portion."
Other substances have been tried, as ground cork, flock made from kids' and goats' hair, the cuttings of furs and feathers, wood, sawdust, and, lately, a very beau- tiful flock made of silk, which gives a magnificent effect, but is so expensive that it can only be used for " Tentures de /uxe."
Mr. Aumonier says : " Until quite recently there were on the walls of some of the public rooms in Hampton Court Palace several old flock papers, which had been hung so long ago that there is now no official record of when they were supplied. They were of fine, bold design, giving dignity to the apartments, and it is greatly to be regretted that some of them have been lately replaced by a comparatively insignificant design in bronze, which already shows signs of tarnishing, and which will eventually become of an unsightly, dirty black. All decorators who love their art will regret the loss of these fine old papers, and will join with the writer in the hope that the responsible authorities will not disturb those that still remain, so long as they can be kept on the walls ; and when that is no longer possible, that they
32
PROGRESS AND IMPROVEMENT
will have the designs reproduced in fac-simile, which could be done at a comparatively small cost.
" Mr. Grace, in his History of Paperhangnigs, says that by the combination of flock and metal, ' very splen- did hangings' are produced; an opinion to which he gave practical expression some years afterwards when he was engaged in decorating the new House of Parliament, using for many of the rooms rich and sumptuous hang- ings of this character, especially designed by the elder Pugin, and manufactured tor Mr. Grace from his own blocks."
In England, in the time of Queen Anne, paper staining had become an industry of some importance, since it was taxed with others for raising supplies "to carry on the present war' -Marlborough's campaign in the low countries against France. Glarence Cook, whom I am so frequently quoting because he wrote so much worth quoting, says:
"One of the pleasant features of the Queen Anne style is its freedom from pedantry, its willingness to admit into its scheme of ornamentation almost anything that is intrinsically pretty or graceful. We can, if we choose, paint the papers and stuffs with which we cover our walls with wreaths of flowers and festoons of fruits; with groups of figures from poetry or history ; with grotesques and arabesques, from Rome and Pompeii, passed through the brains of Louis XIV's Frenchmen or of Anne's Englishmen; with landscapes, even, pretty pastorals set in framework of wreaths or ribbon, or more simply arranged like regular spots in rows of alternate subjects."
It may be interesting to remember that the pretty wall-papers of the days of Queen Anne and early Georges
33
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
were designed by nobody in particular, at a time when there were no art schools anywhere ; and one can easily see that the wall-papers, the stuff-patterns and the furni- ture of that time are in harmony, showing that they came out of the same creative mould, and were the product of a sort of spirit-of-the-age.
Mica, powdered glass, glittering metallic dust or sand, silver dross, and even gold foil, were later used, and a silver-colored glimmer called cat-silver, all to produce a brilliant effect. This art was known long ago in China, and I am told of a Chinese paper, seen in St. Peters- burg, which had all over it a silver-colored lustre.
Block printing and stencilling naturally belong to this subject, but, as my theme is " Old Time Wall Papers," and my book is not intended to be technical, or a book of reference as regards their manufacture, I shall not dwell on them.
Nor would it be wise to detail all the rival claim- ants for the honor of inventing a way of making wall- paper in rolls instead of small sheets; nor to give the names even of all the famous paper-makers. One, immortalized by Carlyle in his French 'Revolution, must be mentioned — Revillon, whose papers in water colors and in nock were so perfect and so extremely beautiful that Madame de Genlis said they cost as much as fine Gobelin tapestry. Revillon had a large factory in the Rue du Faubourg St. Antoine, Paris, and in 1788 was employing three hundred hands. He was urged to incite his workmen to head the Faubourg in open rebellion, but refused to listen ; and angry at his inability to coerce this honorable man the envoy caused a false report to be spread about, that he intended to cut his wages one-half.
34
rt
-tiff
PLATE IF.
Scenes from the life of an eighteenth century gallant form this unusual old French paper — a gaming quarrel, a duel, an elopement and other edifying episodes, framed in rococo scrolls.
j
TV\
HB "io aiil arh mcnl
bio \Eu?.un.is ?-iHl hrt;: inamaqola ni; .bub E
.3H01D8 000001 Hi
PROGRESS AND IMPROVEMENT
This roused a furious mob, and everything was ruined, and he never recovered from the undeserved disaster.
Carlyle closes his description of the fatal riot with these words: "What a sight! A street choked up with lumber, tumult and endless press of men. A Paper- Warehouse eviscerated by axe and fire; mad din ot revolt; musket volleys responded to by yells, by miscellaneous missiles, by tiles raining from roof and window, tiles, execrations and slain men ! - -There is an encumbered street, four or five hundred dead men; unfortunate Revillon has found shelter in the Bastille."
England advanced in the art of paper-making during the time the French were planning the Revolution, and English velvet papers became the fashion. In 1754 Mme. de Pompadour had her wardrobe and the passage that led to her apartments hung with English paper. In 1758 she had the bath-room of the Chateau de Champs papered with it, and others followed her example.
But in 1765 the importation of English papers- engraved, figured, printed, painted to imitate damasks, chintzes, tapestries, and so on — was checked by a heavy tax. So at this time papers were a precious and costly possession. They were sold when the owner was leaving a room, as the following advertisements will show:
Dec. 17, 1782. "To-let; large room, with mirror over the fireplace and paper which the owner is willing to sell."
Feb. 5, 1784. "To-let; Main body of a house, on the front, with two apartments, one having mirrors, woodwork and papers, which will be sold."
When the owner of the paper did not succeed in selling it, he took it away, as it was stretched on cloth
35 li
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
or mounted on frames. These papers were then often offered for sale in the Parisian papers ; we find adver- tised in 1 764, " The paperhangers for a room, painted green and white"; November 26, 1766, "A hanging of paper lined with muslin, valued at 12 Livres"; February 13, 1777, "For sale; by M. Hubert, a hanging of crimson velvet paper, pasted on cloth, with gilt mouldings "; April 17, 1783, " 38 yards of apple-green paper imitating dam- ask, 24 livres, cost 38."
By 1782, the use of wall-papers became so general that, from that time on, the phrase " decorated with wall-paper " frequently occurs in advertisements of lux- urious apartments to let. Before this time, mention had commonly been made, in the same manner, ot the woodwork and mirrors.
October 12, 1782, the "Journal general de France ad- vertised : " To let; two houses, decorated with mirrors and papers, one with stable for five horses, 2 carriage-houses, large garden and well, the other with three master's apartments, stable for 12 horses, 4 carriage-houses, etc." Oct. 28, 1782, "To let; pretty apartment of five rooms, second floor front, with mirrors, papers, etc." Feb. 24, 1783, "To let; rue Montmartre, first floor apartment, with antechamber; drawing-room, papered in crimson, with mouldings; and two bed-rooms, one papered to match, with two cellars."
Mme. du Bocage, in her Letters on England, Hol- land, and Italy, (1750) gives an account of Mrs. Monta- gue's breakfast parties: "In the morning, breakfasts agreeably bring together the people of the country and and strangers, in a closet lined with painted paper of Pe- kin, and furnished with the choicest movables of China.
36
PROGRESS AND IMPROVEMENT
" Mrs. Montague added, to her already large house, 'the room of the Cupidons', which was painted with roses and jasmine, intertwined with Cupids, and the 'feather room,' which was enriched with hangings made from the plumage ot almost every bird."
37
\ .• / . V-
i -v -ii 4t\JJL^ ,.JL^i..
Ill
EARLIEST WALL PAPERS IN AMERICA
Ill
EARLIEST WALL PAPERS IN AMERICA
WALL-PAPERS of expensive styles and artistic variety were brought to America as early as 1735. Before that time, and after, clay paint was used by thrifty housewives to freshen and clean the sooty walls and ceilings, soon blackened by the big open fires. This was prepared simply by mixing with water the yellow-gray clay from the nearest claybank.
In Philadelphia, walls were whitewashed until about 1745, when we find one Charles Hargrave ad- vertising wall-paper, and a little later Peter Fleeson manufacturing paper-hangings and papir-mache mould- ings at the corner of Fourth and Chestnut Streets.
Those who could not afford to import papers painted their walls, either in one color or stencilled in a simple pattern, or panelled, in imitation of French papers; each panel with its own picture, large or small. These attempts at decoration ranged with the taste and skill of the artist, from fruit and floral designs and patterns copied from India prints and imported china, to more elaborate
4'
EARLIEST WALL PAPERS IN AMERICA
and often horrible presentments of landscapes and " waterscapes." The chimney breast, or projecting wall forming the chimney, received especial attention.
In my own farm-house, which was built in Colonial style in 1801 (with, as tradition says, forty pumpkin pies and two barrels of hard cider to cheer on the assisting neighbors), one of my first tasks was to have five or six layers ol cheap papers dampened and scraped off. And, to my surprise, we found hand-painted flowers, true to nature and still extremely pretty, though of course scratched and faded after such heroic treatment — fuchsias in one room, carnation pinks in another, and in the front hall honeysuckle blossoms, so defaced that they suggested some of the animal tracks that Mr. Thompson-Seton copies in his books. What an amount of painstaking and skilled work all that implied ! That was a general fashion at the time the house was built, and many such hand-paintings have been reported to me.
Mrs. Alice Morse Earle mentions one tavern parlor which she has seen where the walls were painted with scenes from a tropical forest. On either side of the fire- place sprang a tall palm tree. Coiled serpents, crouching tigers, monkeys, a white elephant, and every form of vivid-colored bird and insect crowded each other on the walls. And she speaks of a wall-paper on the parlor of the Washington Tavern at Westfield, Massachusetts, which gives the lively scenes of a fox chase.
Near Conway, New Hampshire, there is a cottage where a room can still be seen that has been most elabo- rately adorned by a local artist. The mountains are evenly scalloped and uniformly green, the sky evenly blue all the way round. The trees resemble those to be found
42
EARLIEST WALL PAPERS IN AMERICA
in a Noah's Ark, and the birds on them are certainly one-fourth as large as the trees.
The painted landscapes are almost impossible to find, but I hear of one room, the walls of which are painted with small landscapes, water scenes, various animals, and trees. A sympathetic explorer has discovered another in similar style at Westwood, Massachusetts, near Dedham.
In the old " Johnson House," Charlestown, New Hampshire, the door remains on the premises, with hatchet marks still visible, through which the Indians, " horribly fixed for war," dashed in pursuit of their trembling victims. The hinges of hoop iron and latch with stringhole beneath are intact. A portion of its surface is still covered with the paint of the early settlers, made ot red earth mixed with skimmed milk.
A friend wrote me that her grandmother said that " before wall-paper became generally used, many well- to-do persons had the walls of the parlor — or keeping room as it was sometimes called — and spare room tinted a soft Colonial yellow, with triangles, wheels or stars in dull green and black for a frieze ; and above the chair- rail a narrower frieze, same pattern or similar, done in stencilling, often by home talent.
"My great aunt used to tell me that when company was expected, the edge of the floor in the ' keeping room ' was first sanded, then the most artistic one of the family spread it evenly with a birch broom, and with sticks made these same wheels and scallops around the edge of the room, and the never-missing pitcher of asparagus completed the adornment."
On the panels of a mantel, she remembers, an ar- tist came from New Boston and painted a landscape,
43 7
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
while in the sitting-room, across the hall, a huge vase of gayly tinted flowers was painted over the mantel. On the mantel of another house was painted the Boston massacre. This was in existence only a few years ago.
Later came the black and white imitation of marble for the halls and stairs, and yellow floors with the stencil border in black. This was an imitation of the French. In Balzac's Pierrette is described a pretentious provincial house, of which the stairway was " painted throughout in imitation of yellow-veined black marble."
Madeleine Gale Wynne, in The House Beautiful, wrote most delightfully about "Clay, Paint and other Wall Furnishings," and I quote her vivid descriptions of the wall paintings she saw in Deerfield and Bernardston, Massachusetts.
" These wall paintings, like the embroideries, were derived from the India prints or the Chinese and other crockery. Whether the dweller in this far-ofF New England atmosphere was conscious of it or not, he was indebted to many ancient peoples for the wTay in which he intertwined his spray, or translated his flower and bud into a decorative whole.
" Odd and amusing are many of the efforts, and they have often taken on a certain individuality that makes a curious combination with the Eastern strain.
" An old house in Deerfield has the remains of an interesting wall, and a partition of another done in blue, with an oval picture painted over the mantel-tree. The picture was of a blue ship in full sail on a blue ocean.
" The other wall was in a small entry-way, and had an abundance of semi-conventionalized flowers done in red, black, and browns. The design was evidently
4+
EARLIEST WALL PAPERS IN AMERICA
painted by hand, and evolved as the painter worked. A border ran round each doorway, while the wall spaces were treated separately and with individual care ; the ef- fect was pleasing, though crude. Tulips and roses were the theme.
" This house had at one time been used as a tavern, and there is a tradition that this was one of several pub- lic houses that were decorated by a man who wandered through the Connecticut Valley during Revolutionary times, paying his way by these flights of genius done in oil. Tradition also has it that this man had a past ; whether he was a spy or a deserter from the British lines, or some other fly-irom-justice body, was a matter of speculation never determined. He disappeared as he came, but behind him he left many walls decorated with fruit and flowers, less perishable than himself.
" We find his handiwork not only in Deerfield, but in Bernardston. There are rumors that there was also a wall o± his painting in a tavern which stood on the bor- der line between Massachusetts and Vermont. In Con- necticut, too, there are houses that have traces of his work. In Bernardston, Massachusetts, there is still to be seen a room containing a very perfect specimen of wall painting which is attributed to him. This work may be of later date, but no one knows its origin.
" This design is very pleasing, not only because of its antiquity and associations, but because in its own way it is a beautiful and fitting decoration. The color tones are full, the figures quaintly systematic and showing much invention.
"The body of the wall is of a deep cream, divided into diamond spaces by a stencilled design, consisting of
45
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
four members in diamond shape ; the next diamond is made up of a different set of diamonds, there being four sets in all; these are repeated symmetrically, so that a larger diamond is produced. Strawberries, tulips, and two other flowers of less pronounced individuality are used, and the colors are deliciously harmonized in spite of their being in natural tints, and bright at that. Now, this might have been very ugly — most unpleasing; on the contrary, it is really beautiful.
" There is both dado and frieze, the latter being an elaborate festoon, the former less good, made up of strag- gling palms and other ill considered and constructed growths. One suspects the dado to be an out-and-out steal from some chintz, while the tulips and strawberries bear the stamp of personal intimacy.
" The culminating act of imagination and art was arrived at on the chimney-breast decoration ; there indeed do we strike the high-water mark of the decorator ; he was not hampered either by perspective or probability.
" We surmise that Boston and its harbor is the sub- ject ; here are ships, horses and coaches, trees and road- ways, running like garlands which subdivide the spaces, many houses in a row, and finally a row of docile sheep that tor a century have fed in unfading serenity at their cribs in inexplicable proximity to the base of the dwell- ings. All is fair in love, war, and decoration.
" The trees are green, the houses red, the sheep white, and the water blue; all is in good tone, and I wish that it had been on my mantel space that this renegade painter had put his spirited effort."
A friend told me of her vivid recollection of some frescoed portraits on the walls of the former home of a
46
EARLIEST WALL PAPERS IN AMERICA
prominent Quaker in Minneapolis. Her letter to a cousin who attends the Friends' Meeting there brought this answer : " I had quite a talk with Uncle Junius at Meet- ing about his old house. Unfortunately, the walls were ruined in a tire a few years ago and no photograph had ever been taken of them. The portraits thee asked about •were in a bed-room. William Penn, with a roll in his hand (the treaty, I suppose) was on one side of a window and Elizabeth Fry on the other. These two were life size.
"Then, (tell it not in Gath!) there was a billiard room. Here Mercury, Terpsichore and other gay creatures tripped around the frieze, and there was also a picture of the temple in Pompeii and Minerva with her owl. In the sitting room on one side of the bay window was a fisher-woman mending her net, with a lot of fish about her. On the other side of the window another woman was feeding a deer.
" On the dining-room walls a number of rabbits were playing under a big fern and there was a whole family of prairie chickens, and ducks were flying about the ceiling. Uncle Junius said, ' It cost me a thousand dollars to have those things frescoed on, and they looked nice, too ! ' I suppose when the Quaker preachers came to visit he locked up the billiard room and put them in the room with William Penn and Elizabeth Fry. He seemed rather mortified about the other and said it would not do to go into a Quaker book, at all!"
This house was built about the middle of the nineteenth century, when Minneapolis was a new town; but it undoubtedly shows the influence of the old New England which was the genial Friend's boyhood home.
47
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
The scores of Quaker preachers and other visiting Friends who accepted the overflowing hospitality of this cheerfully frescoed house seem to have had none of the scruples of Massachusetts Friends of an earlier date. A lady sent me a strip of hideously ugly paper in squares, the colors dark brown and old gold. She wrote me that this paper was on the walls of the parlor of their house in Hampton, Massachusetts. The family were Friends; and once, when the Quarterly Meeting was held there, some of the Friends refused to enter their house, as the paper was too gay and worldly. And it actually had to be taken oft !
After the clay paint and the hand painting came the small sheets or squares of paper, and again I was fortunate in rinding in my adopted farmhouse, in the "best room" upstairs, a snuff-brown paper of the "wine- glass" pattern that was made before paper was imported in rolls, and was pasted on the walls in small squares. The border looks as much like a row of brown cats sit- ting down as anything else. You know the family used to be called together to help cut out a border when a room was to be papered ; but very few of these home- made borders are now to be found.
I was told of a lady in Philadelphia who grew weary of an old and sentimental pattern in her chamber, put on in small pieces and in poor condition, and begged her husband to let her take it off. But he was attached to the room, paper and all, and begged on his part that it might remain. She next visited queer old stores where papers were kept, and in one of them, in a loft, found enough of this very pattern, with Cupids and doves and roses, to re-paper almost the entire room. And it was
48
EARLIEST WALL PAPERS IN AMERICA
decidedly difficult so to match the two sides of the face of the little God of Love as to preserve his natural expres- sion of roguishness and merry consciousness of his power.
It may interest some to learn just what drew my attention to the subject of old-time wall-papers. One, and an especially fine specimen, is associated with my earliest memories, and will be remembered to my latest day. For, although a native of New Hampshire, I was born at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, and there was a merry dance to the music of mandolin and tambourine round the tomb of Virgil on my natal morn. Some men were fishing, others bringing in the catch ; farther on was a picnic party, sentimental youths and maidens eating comfits and dainties to the tender notes of a flute. And old Vesuvius was smoking violently. All this because the room in which I made my debut was adorned with a landscape or scenic paper.
Fortunately, this still remains on the walls, little altered or defaced by the wear of years. When admir- ing it lately, the suggestion came to me to have this paper photographed at once, and also that of the Seasons in the next house; these were certainly too rare and interesting to be lost. It is singular that the only papers of this sort I had ever seen were in neighboring homes of two professors at Dartmouth College, and remarkable that neither has been removed: now I find many duplicates of these papers.
What a keen delight it was to me as a child to be allowed to go to Professor Young's, to admire his white hair, which I called " pitty white fedders," and to gaze at the imposing sleighing party just above the mantel, and at the hunters or the haymakers in the fields !
49
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
A good collection is always interesting, from choice old copies of first editions to lanterns, cow-bells, scissors, cup- plates, fans or buttons ; and I mourn that I did not think of securing photographs of quaint and antique papers years ago, for most of them have now disappeared.
Showing the beginnings of my collection to an amateur photographer, he was intensely interested, and said : " Why, I can get you a set as good as these ! The house has been owned by one family for eighty-five years, and the paper was put on as long ago as that." And cer- tainly his addition is most interesting. The scenes in one are French. You see a little play going on, such as we have been told in a recent magazine article they still have in France — a street show in which a whole family often take part. They appear as accompaniment to a fair or festival. The hole for the stove-pipe, penetrating the foliage, has a ludicrous effect, contrasting in abrupt fashion - the old and the new, the imposing and the practical.
This enthusiastic friend next visited Medrield, Mas- sachusetts, where he heard there were several such papers, only to be told that they had just been scraped off and the rooms modernized.
Hearing of a fine example of scenic paper in the old Perry House at Keene, New Hampshire, I wrote immediately, lest that, too, should be removed, and through the kindness of absolute strangers can show an excellent representation of the Olympic games, dances, Greeks placing wreaths upon altars, and other scenes from Grecian life, well executed. These are grand con- ceptions ; I hope they may never be vandalized by chisel and paste, but be allowed to remain as long as that his- toric house stands. They are beautifully preserved.
5°
GOOIG1
PLATE V.
A detail of the preceding paper. Though well designed, this is not a beautifully colored or very well printed paper ; the color scheme is carried out in fourteen print- ings.
•
•
iilMPHlHUUUlH
MHiiWBIHHiiHH BHHfBI
.
[law H]guorfT .isqfiq gnibs-jaiq aril to I iuJ .••:''• I hainhq Ib • 10 bs : IhAhu^d ?-i KidJ
-3nhq ns^Jiuoi ni Jtro bainw ?.i amarfus lolov
•P8P*
'
EARLIEST WALL PAPERS IN AMERICA
A brief magazine article on my new enthusiasm, illus- trated with photographs of papers I knew about, was received with surprising interest. My mail-bag came crowded, and I was well-nigh "snowed in," as De Quincy put it, by fascinating letters from men and women who rejoiced in owning papers like those of my illustra- tions, or had heard of others equally fine and equally venerable, and with cordial invitations to journey here and there to visit unknown friends and study their wall- papers, the coloring good as new after a hundred years or more. It was in this unexpected and most agreeable way that I heard of treasures at Windsor, Vermont ; Claremont, New Hampshire ; Taunton, Massachusetts, and quaint old Nantucket, and was informed that my special paper, with the scenes from the Bay of Naples (represented so faithfully that one familiar with the Ital- ian reality could easily recognize every one) was a most popular subject with the early purchaser and was still on the walls of a dozen or more sitting-rooms.
The Reverend Wallace Nutting, of Providence, whose fame as an artistic photographer is widespread, sent me a picture of a parlor in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, where he found this paper. Three women dressed in old-fashioned style, even to the arrangement of their hair, are seated at table, enjoying a cup of tea. An old tabby is napping cosily in a soft-cushioned chair. And above, on the right, Vesuvius is pouring forth the usual volumes of smoke. A fine old mahogany sideboard, at the foot of the volcano, decorated with decanters and glasses large and small, presents an inviting picture.
The house at Hillsboro Bridge, New Hampshire, where Ex-Governor Benjamin Pierce lived for years, and
5' s
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
where his son, Franklin Pierce, passed a happy boyhood, has this paper, and several similar letters show how gen- erally it was admired. Mrs. Lawrence, of Boston, wrote: " I send by this mail a package of pictures, taken by my daughter, of the Italian wall-paper on her grand- father's old home in Exeter, N. H. The house is now owned by the Academy and used as a dormitory. The views which I enclose have never been published. We have two or three remarkable specimens of wall-paper made in India a hundred and fifty years ago ; the strips are hanging on the wall, nailed up."
The Italian paper proved to be my old friend Vesu- vius and his bay. An Exeter professor also wrote des- cribing the same paper and adding translations of the Greek inscriptions on the monuments.
Friends would often write of such a wonderful spe- cimen at some town or village. I would write to the address given and be told of this Bay of Naples paper again. They were all brought over and put on at about the same time.
One of the oldest houses in Windsor, Vermont, still has a charming parlor paper, with landscape and water, boats, castles, ruins and picturesque figures, which was imported and hung about 1810. This house was built by the Honorable Edward R. Campbell, a promi- nent Vermonter in his day, and here were entertained President Monroe and other notable visitors. Later the Campbell house was occupied for some years by Salmon P. Chase. It is now the home of the Sabin family.
A Boston antique dealer wrote me : " In an article of yours in The House Beautiful, you have a photograph of the paper of the old Perry House, Keene, N. H. We
52
EARLIEST WALL PAPERS IN AMERICA
want to say that we have in our possession here at this store, strung up temporarily, a paper with the same sub- ject. It forms a complete scene, there being thirty pieces in attractive old shades of brown. We bought this from a family in Boston some little time ago, and it is said to have been made in France for a planter in New Orleans in or before i 800. We feel we would be excused in say- ing that this is the most interesting lot of any such thing in existence. It has been handed down from family to family, and they, apparently, have shown it, because the bottom ends of some of the sheets are considerably worn from handling. You understand this paper was never hung on the wall and it isjust as it was originally made." He fairly raves over the beautiful rich browns and cream and " O ! such trees ! "
To my inquiry whether his price for this paper was really two thousand dollars, as I had heard, he replied, " We would be very sorry to sell the paper for two thou- sand dollars, for it is worth five thousand."
An artist who called to examine the paper is equal- ly enthusiastic. He writes : " I was greatly impressed by the remarkably fine execution of the entire work. Doubtless it was printed by hand with engraved blocks. A large per cent of the shading, especially the faces of the charming figures, was surely done by hand, and all is the production of a superior artist. There are several sections, each perhaps three feet square, of such fine de- sign, grouping, finish and execution of light and shade, as to make them easily samples of such exquisite nicety and comprehensive artistic work as to warrant their be- ing framed.
"The facial expression of each of the many figures
53
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
is so true that it indicates the feelings and almost the thoughts of the person represented ; there is remarkable individuality and surprising animation. I was forcibly struck with the inimitable perspective of the buildings and the entire landscape with which they are associated. Practically speaking, the buildings are ot very perfect Roman architecture ; there is, however, a pleasing ven- ture manifested, where the artist has presented a little of the Greek work with here and there a trace of Egyptian, and perhaps of the Byzantine. These make a pleasing anachronism, such as Shakespeare at times introduced into his plays: a venture defended by Dr. Samuel Johnson, as well as other distinguished critics. The trees are done with an almost photographic truth and exactness. After a somewhat extended and critical examination of things of this kind in various parts of Europe, I do not hesitate to say that I have seen nothing of the kind that excels the work you have. What is quite remarkable about it, and more than all exhibits its truth to nature, it seems to challenge decision whether it shows to best advantage in strong daylight or twilight, by artificial light or that of the sun ; an effect always present in nature, but not often well produced on paper or canvas. The successful ven- ture to use so light a groundwork was much like that of Rubens, where he used a white sheet in his great paint- ing, 'The Descent from the Cross.' '
Since the above description was written, this incom- parable paper has passed into the hands of Mrs. Franklin R. Webber, 2nd, of Boston, who will either frame it, or in some other way preserve it as perfectly as possible.
The remarkable paper shown in Plate XLI and the three following plates were sent me by Miss Janet A.
54
EARLIEST WALL PAPERS IN AMERICA
Lathrop of Stockport-on-Hudson, New York. It is cer- tainly one of the finest of the scenic papers still in exist- ence. The scene is oriental, the costumes seeming both Turkish and Chinese. Temples and pagodas, a proces- sion, a barge on the river and a gathering in a tea-house follow in succession about the room. All are printed by hand on rice paper, in gray tones. The paper is browned with age, but was cleaned and restored about a year ago and is exceedingly well preserved.
The house in which this paper is hung was built by Captain Seth Macy, a retired sea-captain, in 1815. The paper was put on in 1820. Captain Seth seems to have used up all his fortune in building his house, and in a few years he was forced to sell it. The name of " Seth's Folly" still clings to the place. In 1853 Miss Lathrop's father bought the house, and it has ever since been occu- pied by his family. By a singular coincidence, Mrs. Lathrop recognized the paper as the same as some on the old house at Albany in which she was born. Repeated inquiries have failed to locate any other example in America, and photographs have been submitted without avail to both domestic and foreign experts for identi- fication. In the early seventies Miss Lathrop chanced to visit a hunting-lodge belonging to the King of Saxony at Moritzburg, near Dresden, and in the " Chinese room " she found a tapestry or paper exactly similar, from which the paper on her own walls may have been copied.
The two papers just described would seem to be the finest examples of continuous scenic papers still extant. I learn as this book goes to press that Mrs. Jack Gardner, of Boston, has a remarkable old geographical paper, in which the three old-world continents are represented.
55
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
I have been fortunate enough to secure, through the courtesy of Mrs. Russell Jarvis, a picture of the paper in her parlor at Claremont, New Hampshire. The Jarvis family have occupied the house since 1797. This is not a landscape, but consists of small pastoral scenes, placed at intervals and repeated regularly. The design is brown on a cream ground. It has a dado and a frieze in dark blue. It is hand made and all printed by hand, in squares of about eighteen inches, matched carefully. Mrs. Jarvis writes: "I had no idea that the photogra- pher would take in so much each side of the corner, or I should have arranged the furniture differently. The picture I did not suppose was to appear is one of great interest and value. It is supposed to be a Rubens, and has hung there for over a hundred years. It was bought in 1791 in Boston, of a French gentleman from San Domingo, who, on the night of the insurrection there, escaped, saving but little else of his vast possessions. It had evidently been hastily cut from the frame. It rep- resents the presentation of the head of the younger Cy- rus to Tomyris, Queen of the Scythians. The coloring is fine, the figures very beautiful, and the satin and er- mine of the Queen's dress extremely rich. If you look closely, you will see a sword lying on the piano. This is the one Sir William Pepperell was knighted with by King George the Second, in 1745, because of the Battle of Louisburg, and was given my husband's father by Sir William's grand-daughter, I believe."
You see how one photograph brings to you many valuable bits of information apart from the paper sought.
This letter, for example, with its accompanying photograph (see Plate XXII) leads one to the study of
56
EARLIEST WALL PAPERS IN AMERICA
history, art, and literature. The subject of the picture, aside from its supposed origin, is of interest.
The Scythians were Aryans much mixed with Mon- gol blood; they disappear from history about 100 B. C. Cyrus the younger, after subduing the eastern parts of Asia, was defeated by Tomyris, Queen of the Massagetae in Scythia. Tomyris cut off his head and threw it into a vessel rilled with human blood, saying, as she did so, "There, drink thy fill."
Dante refers to this incident in his Purgatory, xii.; and Sackville, in his Mirrour for Magistrates, 1587, says:
Consyder Cyrus —
He whose huge power no man might overthrowe, Tomyris Queen, with great despite hath slowe, His head dismembered from his mangled corpse Herself she cast into a vessel fraught With clotted blood of them that felt her force, And with these words a just reward she taught :
" Drynke now thy fyll of thy desired draught. "
Here seems to be the place to speak more fully of the small scenes placed regularly at intervals. There is a great variety of pretty medallion pictures of this sort, as, alternating figures of a shepherdess with her crook reclining on a bank near a flock of sheep, and a boy studying at a desk, with a teacher standing near by.
Mr. Frank B. Sanborn writes : "The oldest paper I ever saw was in the parlor of President Weare, of Hamp- ton Falls — a simple hunting scene, with three compart- ments ; a deer above, a dog below, and a hunter with his horn below that. It was put on in 1737, when the house was built, and, I think, is there still. Colonel Whiting's house had a more elaborate and extensive scene - what the French called ' Montagnes Russe ' — artificial
57
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
hills in a park, for sliding down, toboggan fashion, and a score of people enjoying them or looking on."
A good authority asserts that rolls of paper did not appear in this country until 1790, so that all these now mentioned must have been imported in square sheets. Notice the step forward — from white walls, through a clay wash, to hand painting, stencilling, small imported sheets, and, at last, to rolls of paper.
PLATE VI.
Fragment of the famous old racing paper from the Timothy Dexter house. This is too broken and stained to admit of the reproduction of its original colors — blue sky, gray clouds, green turf, brown horses and black, and jockeys in various colors. The scene here given fills the width of the paper, about eighteen inches.
I
•
'
on ha-
I adi
;-
3j
:
-
i; oJ (jla
'
-
IV WALL PAPERS IN HISTORIC HOMES
IV WALL PAPERS IN HISTORIC HOMES
ESTHER SINGLETON, in her valuable and charm- ing book on French and English Furniture, tells us that in the early Georgian period, from 1714 to 1 754, the art of the Regency was on the decline, and " the fashionable 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 Hancock House was being built and, until it was demolished a few years ago ( i 863), 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 Hancock, son of the Rev. John Hancock, the kitchen of whose house is now owned by the Lex- ington Historical Society.
On January 23, 1737-8, we rind him writing from Boston to Mr. John Rowe, Stationer, London, as follows : " Sir, Inclosed you have the Dimensions o± a Room for a Shaded Hanging to be done after the Same Pattern I have
61
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
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 hand- somer 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, Peacocks, 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 hang- ings Done in Oyle, so I Beg your particular Care in pro- curing 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
62
WALL PAPERS IN HISTORIC HOMES
was more cool, genteel, and agreeable than common ; concealed and retained his passions, 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 mo- tive and can enjoy good copies of the expensive tap- estries 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 Washington, who, with the assistance 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 Washington that she had three able-bodied men at her service — General Wash- ington, Lafayette himself and his aide-de-camp. Where- upon 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 evi- dence that he gracefully descended to a more peaceful
63
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
level and gave us hints as to that valuable combination known to the world as flour paste.
There is in existence a memorandum in Washing- ton'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 Washington'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 wras 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 pic- tures 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
64
WALL PAPERS IN HISTORIC HOMES
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 or. 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 niache 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, Massachusetts. The Dorothy Quincy house is now owned by the Colonial Dames of Massachusetts, 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 Hancock 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. Ab- bott 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
65
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
prescription on Hancock's head, they were forced to spend their honeymoon in hiding, as the red-coats had marked for capture this elegant, cocked-hat ' rebel ' diplo- matist of the blue and bluff. Dorothy Quincy Hancock, the niece of Holmes's ' Dorothy Q^,' is a fascinating fig- ure in history. Lafayette paid her a visit of ceremony and pleasure at the Hancock 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 Hancock-Clarke house, in Lexington, Massa- chusetts, is a treasure house of important relics, besides files of pamphlets, manuscripts and printed documents, 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 Hancock 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 attrac- tive about it. I have a small photograph of it, which must be studied through a glass.
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 — shields, with javelins, battle-axes and trumpets massed 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
66
WALL PAPERS IN HISTORIC HOMES
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, Massachusetts, is precious only from association. 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, 1 746- 1796, and during that time the paper was put on the Lafayette room.
Several important personages are known to have oc- cupied this room, among them General Lafayette, Judge Sewall, Luigi Monti, Doctor Parsons, General Artemus Ward. The house was first known as Howe's in Sud- bury, 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 i 860 — 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 charac- ters, 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
67 10
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
with the dais at one end for the fiddlers. But the pol- ished floor no longer feels the pressure of dainty feet in high-heeled slippers gliding over it to the strains of con- tra-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 Washington passed over this road when he took command o± 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. Washington passed 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, Hancock, 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 Agassiz, in his visits to the house, examined the ancient oaks near the inn, and pronounced 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
68
WALL PAPERS IN HISTORIC HOMES
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 i 820. Now it is used as the Rockville town farm. The noted French wall-paper on the dining-room, where Lafayette was entertained, repre- sented mythological scenes. There was Atlas, King ot 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 ot mytholog- ical 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, moun- tains, cascades, and castles, with classic figures artistically arranged among them. There seems to have been a greater variety than is usual, from a spirited horse, stand- ing 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, Cassandra, Cadmus, Diana, Endymion, Juno, Jupiter, Iris, Laocoon, Medusa, Minerva, Neptune, Pan- dora, Penelope, Romulus, Sirius, Thalia, Theseus, Venus}
69
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
Vulcan, and many others were "among those present." Below these names came a dado of grassy 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 in- scription :
"In grateful memory of General Lafayette, whose love of liberty brought him to our shores, 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 Washington'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 rlames 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 glass 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 buttercups.
Still another, more unusual, was a representation of a seaport town, Gallipoli, of European Turkey ; armed men are marching; you see the water and picturesque
70
WALL PAPERS IN HISTORIC HOMES
harbor, and Turkish soldiers in boats. The red of the uni- forms 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 assured 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 knoius 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 dis- tinguished 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 principal 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 fireplaces. This room was used as a picture gallery, and contained many
71
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
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 brass ball on the top. The face, instead of the usual Roman numbers, had the Arabic i, 2, y, etc. There were two small dials. On each side o± 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 wras necessary to use a step-ladder to reach the china from the higher shelves. Back of the oval room was a passage 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. One room was called the 'gold room,' and everything in it, even the counterpane, was of gold color. The doors were mahogany, and had large brass knobs and brass pieces extending nearly to the centre. The carpets were all woven whole.
" The house outside was painted white, with green blinds, though every room was furnished with shutters inside. A little in the rear of the mansion extended a
72
WALL PAPERS IN HISTORIC HOMES
number of out-buildings, in the form of a crescent, be- ginning with the stable on one side, and ending with the cook house on the other. General Knox kept twenty saddle horses and a number of pairs of carriage horses. Once there was a gateway, surmounted by the American Eagle, leading into what is now Knox Street. ' Mont- pelier,' as it was called, had many distinguished visitors every summer."
I noticed in a recent paper the report of an old-time game supper, participated in by ninety prominent sports- men at Thomaston, Maine, following the custom inau- gurated by General Knox for the entertainment of French guests.
It was through hearing of the Knox house that 1 learned of a "death room." There was one over the eastern dining-room. These depressing rooms had but one window, and the paper was dark and gloomy — white, with black figures, and a deep mourning frieze. Benches were ranged stiffly around the sides, and there were draw- ers filled with the necessities for preparing a body for burial. Linen and a bottle of "camphire" were never forgotten. There the dead lay till the funeral. I can shiver over the intense gruesomeness of it. How Poe or Hawthorne could have let his inspired imagination work up the possibilities of such a room ! A skeleton at the feast is a slight deterrent from undue gaiety, compared with this ever-ready, sunless apartment.
This reminds me that I read the other day of a "deadly-lively" old lady, who, having taken a flat in the suburban depths of Hammersmith, England, stipulated before signing her lease that the landlord should put black wall-paper on the walls of every room except the
73
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
kitchen. Possibly she had a secret sorrow which she wished to express in this melodramatic fashion. But why except the culinary department ? We have been hearing a good deal lately about the effect of color on the nerves and temperament generally. A grim, undertaker-like tone of this kind would no doubt induce a desired mel- ancholy, and if extended to the region of the kitchen range, might have furthered the general effect by ruining the digestion.
A writer in a recent number of the Decorator s and Painters Magazine, London, says: "An interview has just taken place with a ' a well-known wall-paper manu- facturer,' who, in the course of his remarks, informed the representative of the Morning Comet that black wall-papers were now all the rage. ' You would be surprised,' he said, ' how little these papers really detract from the light- ness of a room, the glossiness of their surface compensat- ing almost for the darkness of their shade;' and upon this score there would seem to be no reason why a good pitch paper should not serve as an artistic decorative covering for the walls of a drawing-room or a ' dainty ' boudoir.
" It has been generally accepted that highly-glazed surfaces render wall-papers objectionable to the eye, and that they are therefore only fit for hanging in sculleries, bath-rooms and the like, where sanitary reasons outweigh decorative advantages. Very probably the gentleman who recommends black papers for walls would also recommend their use for ceilings, so that all might be en suite, and the effect would undoubtedly be added to, were the paint- work also of a deep, lustrous black, whilst — it may be stretching a point, but there is nothing like being consis- tent and thorough — the windows might at the same time
74
WALL PAPERS IN HISTORIC HOMES
be 'hung' in harmony with walls and ceilings. Coffin trestles with elm boards would make an excellent table, and what better cabinets for bric-a-brac (miniature skele- tons, petrified death's-head moths, model tombstones and railed vaults, and so on) than shelved coffins set on end? Plumes might adorn the mantel-shelf, and weeds and weepers festooned around skulls and crossbones would sufficiently ornament the walls without the aid of pic- tures, whilst the fragments from some dis-used charnel- house might be deposited in heaps in the corners of the apartment."
The old governors often indulged in expensive and unusual wall-papers. The Governor Gore house at Wal- tham, Massachusetts, had three, all of which I had photo- graphed. The Gore house, until recently the home of Miss Walker, is one of the most beautiful in Massachu- setts, and was an inheritance from her uncle, who came into possession of the property in 1856. Before Miss Walker's death, she suggested that the estate be given to the Episcopal Church in Waltham for a cathedral or a residence for the bishop.
The place is known as the Governor Gore estate, and is named for Christopher Gore, who was governor of Massachusetts in 1799. It covers nearly one hundred and fifty acres of gardens, woodlands and fields. The present mansion was erected in i 802 and replaces the one destroyed by fire.
The mansion is a distinct pattern of the English country house, such as was built by Sir Christopher Wren, the great eighteenth century architect. It is of brick construction. In the interior many of the original feat- ures have been retained, such as the remarkable " Bird of
75 11
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
Paradise" paper in the drawing-room. All the apart- ments are very high ceiled, spacious and richly furnished. Some of Governor Gore's old pieces of furniture, silver and china are still in use.
The Badger homestead, in Old Gilmanton, was the home of Colonel William Badger, Governor of New Hampshire in i 834 and 1835, and descended from a long line of soldierly, patriotic and popular men. Fred Myron Colby sketched the home of the Badgers in the Granite Monthly for December, 1882 :
" Gov. Badger was a tall, stately man, strong, six feet in height, and at some periods of his life weighed nearly three hundred pounds. He was active and stirring his whole life. Though a man of few words, he was remarkably genial. He had a strong will, but his large good sense prevented him from being obstinate. He was generous and hospitable, a friend to the poor, a kind neighbor, and a high-souled, honorable Christian gentle- man. The grand old mansion that he built and lived in has been a goodly residence in its day. Despite its some- what faded majesty, there is an air of dignity about the ancestral abode that is not without its influence upon the visitor. It is a house that accords well with the style of its former lords ; you see that it is worthy of the Badgers. The grounds about its solitary stateliness are like those of the ' old English gentlemen.' The mansion stands well in from the road ; an avenue fourteen rods long and ex- cellently shaded leads to the entrance gate. There is an extensive lawn in front of the house, and a row of ancient elms rise to guard, as it were, the tall building with its hospitable portal in the middle, its large windows, and old, moss-covered roof. The house faces the southwest,
76
WALL PAPERS IN HISTORIC HOMES
is two and a half stories high, and forty-four by thirty- six feet on the ground.
" As the door swings open we enter the hall, which is ten by sixteen feet. On the left is the governor's sit- ting-room, which occupied the southeast corner ot the house, showing that Gov. Badger did not, like Hamlet, dread to be too much 'i' the sun.' It is not a large room, only twenty by sixteen feet, yet it looks stately. In this room the governor passed many hours reading and entertaining his guests. In it is the antique rocking- chair that was used by the governor on all occasions. A large fire-place, with brass andirons and fender, is on one side, big enough to take in half a cord of wood at a time. Near by it stood a frame on which were heaped sticks of wood, awaiting, I suppose, the first chilly evening. It must be a splendid sight to see those logs blazing, and the firelight dancing on the old pictures and the mirror and the weapons on the walls.
"The most noticeable thing in the room is the paper upon the walls. It was bought by the governor purposely for this room, and cost one hundred dollars in gold. It is very thick, almost like strawboard, and is fancifully illustrated with all sorts of pictures — landscapes, marine views, court scenes, and other pageants. It will afford one infinite amusement to study the various figures. On one side is a nautical scene. An old-fashioned galleon, such a one as Kidd the pirate would have liked to run afoul of, is being unloaded by a group of negroes. Swarthy mariners, clad in the Spanish costume of the seventeenth century, — long, sausage-shaped hose, with breeches pinned up like pudding bags and fringed at the bottom, boots with wide, voluminous tops, buff coats with sleeves slashed
77
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
in front, and broad-brimmed Flemish beaver hats, with rich hat-bands and plumes of feathers — are watching the unlading, and an old Turk stands near by, complais- ant and serene, smoking his pipe. On the opposite wall there is a grand old castle, with towers and spires and battlements. In the foreground is a fountain, and a group of gallants and ladies are promenading the lawn. One lady, lovely and coquettish, leans on the arm of a cava- lier, and is seemingly engrossed by his conversation, and yet she slyly holds forth behind her a folded letter in her fair white hand which is being eagerly grasped by another gallant — like a scene from the Decameron. In the corner a comely maiden in a trim bodice, succinct petticoat and plaided hose, stands below a tall tree, and a young lad among the branches is letting fall a nest of young birds into her extended apron. The expression on the boy's face in the tree and the spirited protest of the mother bird are very graphically portrayed.
"The loveliest scene of all is that of a bay sweeping far into the land ; boats and ships are upon the tide ; on the shore, rising from the very water's edge, is a fairylike, palatial structure, with machicolated battlements, that re- minds one of the enchanted castle o± Armida. Under the castle walls is assembled a gay company. A cavalier, after the Vandyke style, is playing with might and main upon a guitar, and a graceful, full-bosomed, lithe-limbed Dulcinea is dancing to the music in company with a gaily dressed gallant. It is the Spanish fandango. An- other scene is a charming land and water view with no prominent rigures in it.
" Upon the mantel are several curiosities, notably a fragment of the rock on which Rev. Samuel Hidden
78
WALL PAPERS IN HISTORIC HOMES
was ordained at Tamworth, September 12, 1792, several silhouettes of the various members of the Badger family, and the silver candlesticks, tray and snuffers used by Mrs. Governor Badger. Suspended above, upon the wall, are a pair of horse pistols, a dress sword and a pair of spurs. These were the Governor's, which were used by him in the war of 1812, and also when he was sheriff of the county. The sword has quite a romantic history. It was formerly General Joseph Badger's, who obtained it in the following manner : When a lieutenant in the army, near Crown Point and Lake Champlain, just after the retreat from Canada, in 1777, Badger undertook, at the desire of General Gates, to obtain a British prisoner. With three picked men he started for the British camp at St. John's. Arriving in the neighborhood, he found a large number of the officers enjoying themselves at a ball given by the villagers. One of the Britons, in full ball dress, they were fortunate enough to secure, and took him to their boat. Badger then changed clothes with the officer, returned to the ball, danced with the ladies, hobnobbed with the officers, and gained much valuable information as to the movements of the British army. Before morning light he returned in safety with his pris- oner to Crown Point, where he received the commenda- tions of the commanding general for his bravery. The officer's sword he always kept, and is the same weapon that now hangs on the wall."
Mrs. Joseph Badger, whose husband was the oldest son of Governor William Badger (both, alas! now dead), wrote most kindly to me about the wall-paper, and sent me a picture of it. And she said : " The homestead was built in 1825 by Ex-Gov. William Badger, and the paper
79
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
you inquire about was hung that year. He was at Ports- mouth, N. H., attending court, and seeing this paper in a store, liked it very much, and ordered enough to paper the sitting-room, costing fifty dollars. He did not have enough money with him to pay for it, but they allowed him to take it home, and he sent the money back by the stage driver, who laid it down on the seat where he drove, and the wind blew it away, never to be found, so he had to pay fifty dollars more; at least, so says tradition. The paper is quite a dark brown, and is in a good state of preservation and looks as though it might last one hun- dred years longer."
In a valuable book, entitled Some Colonial Mansions and Those Who Lived in Them, edited by Thomas Allen Glennand, and published in i 898, is a picture of the wall- paper at the Manor House, on page 157 of Volume I, in the chapter which relates to the Patroonship of the Van Rensselaers and the magnificent mansion. This was built in 1765, commenced and finished (except the mod- ern wings) by Stephen Van Rensselaer, whose wife was the daughter of Philip Livingston, a signer of the Decla- ration of Independence.
" Seldom has a house a more splendid history, or romantic origin, than this relic of feudal splendor and colonial hospitality. The house is approached from the lodge-gate through an avenue shaded by rows of ancient trees. The entrance hall is thirty-three feet wide, and is decorated with the identical paper brought from Holland at the time the house was built, having the appearance of old fresco-painting."
The picture which follows this description is too small to be satisfactorily studied without a magnifying
80
WALL PAPERS IN HISTORIC HOMES
glass, but the paper must be impressive as a whole. Imposing pillars on the left, perhaps all that remains of a grand castle ; in front of them large blocks of stone with sculptured men and horses ; at the right of these a pensive, elegant creature of the sterner sex gazing at a mammoth lion couchant on a square pedestal. Beyond the lion, a picturesque pagoda on a high rock, and five more human figures, evidently put in to add to the inter- est of the foreground. This square is surrounded with a pretty wreath, bedecked with flowers, birds and shells. On either side of the hall were apartments some thirty feet wide; the great drawing-rooms, the state bed- room and the spacious library, in which the bookcases of highly polished wood occupied at least seventy feet of wall-space. All of the ceilings are lofty, and fine old wood carvings abounded on every side. Mr. William Bayard Van Rensselaer of Albany still possesses the handsome paper taken from one of these rooms, with tour large scenes representing the seasons. The house was demolished only a few years ago.
I notice that almost all these mansions had walls of wood, either plain or paneled in broad or narrow panels, and simply painted with oil-paint of pure white or a cream yellow ; and a Southern gentleman, whose ances- tors lived in one of these historic homes, tells me that the Southern matrons were great housekeepers, and these white wood walls were thoroughly scrubbed at least three times yearly, from top to bottom.
In Part II of the history of the Carters of Virginia, we read that the duties of Robert Carter as councillor brought him to Williamsburg for a part of the year, and in 1761 he moved, with his family, from " Nomini Hall"
81
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
to the little Virginia capital, where he lived for eleven years. We know, from the invoices sent to London, how the Councillor's home in the city was furnished. The first parlor was bright with crimson-colored paper ; the second had hangings ornamented by large green leaves on a white ground ; and the third, the best parlor, was decorated with a finer grade of paper, the ground blue, with large yellow flowers. A mirror was to be four feet by six and a half, " the glass to be in many pieces, agree- able to the present fashion," and there were marble hearth-slabs, wrought-brass sconces and glass globes for candles, Wilton carpets and other luxuries. The mantels and wainscoting were especially fine.
The paper on the hall of Martin Van Buren's home at Kinderhook, New York, is said to have been interest- ing ; but the present owners have destroyed it, being much annoyed by sightseers.
In the reception room of the Manor House of Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, Maryland, and in the state chamber, where Washington slept (a frequent and wel- come guest at Doughoregan Manor) were papers, both with small floral patterns.
In New York and Albany paper-hanging was an important business by 1750 and the walls of the better houses were papered before the middle of the century. But in the average house the walls were not papered in 1748. A Swedish visitor says of the New York houses at that time, " The walls were whitewashed within, and I did not anywhere see hangings, with which the people in this country seem in general to be little acquainted. The walls were quite covered with all sorts of drawings and pictures in small frames."
82
V NOTES FROM HERE AND THERE
NOTES FROM HERE AND THERE
THE wall-papers of a century ago did have distinct ideas and earnest meaning; a decided theme, per- haps taken from mythology, as the story of Cupid and Psyche, on one of the most artistic of the early panelled papers, to print which we read that fifteen hundred blocks were used. There were twelve panels, each one showing a scene from the experiences of the " Soul Maiden."
You remember that Venus, in a fit of jealousy, ordered Cupid to inspire Psyche with a love for the most contemptible of all men, but Cupid was so stricken with her beauty that he himself fell in love with her. He accordingly conveyed her to a charming spot and gave her a beautiful palace where, unseen and unknown, he visited her every night, leaving her as soon as the day began to dawn. Curiosity destroyed her happiness, for her envious sisters made her believe that in the darkness of night she was embracing some hideous monster. So once, when Cupid was asleep, she drew near to him with
85
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
a lamp and, to her amazement, beheld the most hand- some of the gods. In her excitement of joy and fear, a drop of hot oil fell from her lamp upon his shoulder. This awoke Cupid, who censured her for her distrust and escaped. Then came long tribulations and abuse from Venus, until at last she became immortal, and was united to her lover forever. As you know, Psyche rep- resents the human soul, purified by passions and misfor- tunes and thus prepared for the enjoyment of true and pure happiness.
From this accident, Ella Fuller Maitland has drawn for us —
A SPECIAL PLEADER
" How I hate lamps," Bethia frowning cried,
( Our poverty electric light denied. )
And when to ask her reason I went on,
Promptly she answered thus my question :
" By lamplight was it that poor Psyche gazed
Upon her lover, and with joy amazed
Dropped from the horrid thing a little oil —
Costing herself, so, years of pain and toil :
Had she electric light within her room,
She might have seen Love, yet escaped her doom."
Another mythologic story is grandly depicted in a paper in the residence of Dr. John Lovett Morse, at Taunton, Mass. (Plates LXV to LXX.) This paper was described to me as illustrating the fifth book of Virgil's &neid. When the handsome photographs came, we tried to verify them. But a reading of the entire M?ieid failed to identify any of them, except that the one shown in Plate LXIX might be intended to represent the Trojan women burning the ships of ./Eneas. Who were
86
NOTES FROM HERE AND THERE
the two personages leaping from the clifF? Virgil did not mention them.
A paper in Country Life in America for April, i 905, describing the "Hermitage," Andrew Jackson's home near Nashville, Tennessee, spoke of the "unique" paper on the lower hall, depicting the adventures of Ulysses on the Island of Calypso. The illustration showed the same scenes that we had been hunting for in Virgil. The caption stated that it " was imported from Paris by Jackson. It pictures the story of Ulysses at the Island of Calypso. There are four scenes, and in the last Calypso's maidens burn the boat of Ulysses."
So we turned to the Odyssey. There again we were disappointed. Nobody jumps off cliffs in the Odyssey, Ulysses' boat is not burned, neither does Cupid, who ap- peared in every photograph, figure in the scenes between Ulysses and Calypso.
Next we took to the mythologies ; and in one we found a reference to Fenelon's Adventures of Telemacbus, which sends Telemachus and Mentor to Calypso's island in search of Ulysses, and describes their escape from the goddess's isles and wiles by leaping into the sea and swimming to a vessel anchored near. Here at last were our two cliff jumpers! And in long-forgotten Telemachus was found every scene depicted on the walls.
It is a strange commentary on the intellectual indo- lence of the average human mind, that these two remarkable sets of paper should so completely have lost their identity, and that the misnomers given them by some forgetful inhabitant should in each case have been accepted without question by those who came after him. Other owners of this paper have known what the
87
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
scenes really were; for I have had "Telemachus paper" reported, from Kennebunk, Maine, and from the home of Mr. Henry DeWitt Freeland at Sutton, Massachu- setts. The paper is evidently of French origin, and is mentioned as a Parisian novelty by one of Balzac's char- acters in The Celibates, the scene of which was laid about 1820.
In the Freeland house at Sutton, there are also some scenes from Napoleon's campaign in Egypt. An inscrip- tion reads, " Le 20 mars, 1800, 100,000 Francais com- mandu par le brave Kleber ont vancu 200,000 Turcs, dans le plaines de 1'Heliopili."
Among the historical papers, we have " Mourning at the Tomb of Washington," and Lord Cornwallis pre- senting his sword to Washington. The former was a melancholy repetition of columns and arches, each fram- ing a monument labelled " Sacred to Washington," surmounted by an urn and disconsolate eagle, and sup- ported on either side by Liberty and Justice mourning. Crossed arms and nags in the foreground, and a circular iron fence about the monument completed the picture, which was repeated in straight rows, making with its somber gray and black the most funereal hall and stair- way imaginable.
Papers representing places with truthful details were numerous and popular, as "The Bay of Naples," "The Alhambra," " Gallipoli," "On the Bosporus." A strik- ing paper represents the River Seine at Paris. This paper has a brilliant coloring and the scenes are carried entirely round the room ; nearly all the principal build- ings in Paris are seen. On one side of the room you will notice the Column Vendome, which shows that the
88
NOTES FROM HERE AND THERE
paper was made after 1806. The horses in the arch of the Carousal are still in place. As these were sent back to Venice in 1814, the paper must have been made between these dates.
On the walls of a house in Federal Street, which was once occupied by H. K. Oliver, who wrote the hymn called " Federal Street," is the River Seine paper with important public buildings of Paris along its bank ; sev- eral other houses have this same paper, and half a dozen duplicates have been sent me from various parts of New England.
I have heard of a paper at Sag Harbor, Long Island, in which old New York scenes were pictured, but of this I have not been fortunate enough to secure photographs.
Certain towns and their neighborhoods are particu- larly rich in interesting old papers, and Salem, Massa- chusetts, certainly deserves honorable mention at the head of the list. That place can show more than a score of very old papers in perfect condition to-day, and several houses have modern paper on the walls that was copied from the original paper.
One old house there was formerly owned by a retired merchant, and he had the entire ceiling of the large cupola painted to show his wharves and his ships that sailed from this port for foreign lands.
Another fine house has a water color painting on the walls, done to look like paper ; this is one hundred and seventy-five years old.
A curious paper is supposed to be an attempt to honor the first railroad. This is in bright colors, with lower panels in common gray tints. The friend who obtained this for me suggests that the artist did not know
89
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
how to draw a train of cars, and so filled up the space ingeniously with a big bowlder. This is on the walls of a modest little house, and one wonders that an expen- sive landscape paper should be on the room. But the owner of the house was an expressman and was long employed by Salemites to carry valuable bundles back and forth from Boston. A wealthy man who resided in Chestnut Street was having his house papered during the rage for landscape papers, and this person carried the papers down from Boston so carefully that the gentleman presented him with a landscape paper of his own, as a reward for his interest. Now the mansion has long since parted with its foreign landscapes, but such care was taken of the humble parlor that its paper is still intact and handsome; it is more than seventy-five years old.
A fine French paper shows a fruit garden, probably the Tuileries, in grays and blues. The frieze at the top is of white flowers in arches with blue sky between the arches. This room was papered for Mrs. Story, the mother of Judge Story, in 1818.
In the Osgood house in Essex Street there is a most beautiful paper, imported from Antwerp in the early part of the nineteenth century, depicting a hunting scene. The hunt is centered about the hall and the game is run down and slain in the last sheet. A balustrade is at the foot of the picture. The color is brown sepia shades.
One neat little house, in an out-of-the-way corner in Marblehead, has a French paper in gray, white and black, which was brought from France by a Marblehead man who was captured by a French privateer and lived in France many years. When he returned, he brought this with him. It shows scenes in the life of the French
9o
NOTES FROM HERE AND THERE
soldiers. They are drinking at inns, flirting with pretty girls, but never fighting. Another paper has tropical plants, elephants, natives adorned with little else but feathers and beads. The careful mother will not allow any of the children to go alone into this room for fear they may injure it.
In a Chinese paper, one piece represents a funeral, and the horse with its trappings is being led along with- out a rider ; women and children are gazing at the procession from pagodas.
On the walls of the Johnson house in North Andover is a Marie Antoinette paper, imported from England. I have heard of only this one example of this subject. A number of homes had painted walls, with pictures that imitated the imported landscapes.
At the Art Museum, Boston, one may see many specimens of old paper brought to this country before 1820, and up to 1860. A spirited scene is deer stalking in the Scotch Highlands; the deer is seen in the distance, one sportsman on his knees taking aim, another holding back an excited dog. In another hunting paper, the riders are leaping fences. A pretty Italian paper has peasants dancing and gathering grapes; vines are trained over a pergola, and a border of purple grapes and green leaves surrounds each section of the paper. A curious one is " Little Inns," with signs over the doors, as " Good Ale sold here," or "Traveler's Rest"; all are dancing or drinking, the colors are gay. There are also speci- mens of fireboards, for which special patterns were made, usually quite ornate and striking.
When a daughter of Sir William Pepperell married Nathaniel Sparhawk, he had a paper specially made, with
91 is
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
the fair lady and her happy lover as the principal figures, and a hawk sitting on a spar. This paper is still to be seen in the Sparhawk house at Kittery Point, Maine.
Portsmouth is rich in treaures, but a member of one of the best families there tells me it is very hard to get access to these mansions. Curiosity seekers have com- mitted so many atrocities, in the way of stealing souve- nirs, that visitors are looked upon with suspicion.
A house built in 1 8 1 2 at Sackett's Harbor, New York, has a contemporary paper with scenes which are Chinese in character, but the buildings have tall flag staffs which seem to be East Indian.
Near Hoosic Falls, New York, there used to be a house whose paper showed Captain Cook's adventures. The scenes were in oval medallions, surrounded and con- nected by foliage. Different events of the Captain's life were pictured, including the cannibals' feast, of which he was the involuntary central figure. This paper has been destroyed, and I have sought in vain for photographs of it. But I have seen some chintz of the same pattern, in the possession of Miss Edith Morgan of Aurora, New York, which was saved from her grandfather's house at Albany when it was burned in 1790. So the paper is undoubtedly of the eighteenth century. Think of a nervous invalid being obliged to gaze, day after day, upon the savages gnawing human joints and gluttonizing over a fat sirloin !
The adventures of Robinson Crusoe were depicted on several houses, and even Mother Goose was immor- talized in the same way.
The managers of a "Retreat" for the harmlessly insane were obliged first to veil with lace a figure paper,
92
NOTES FROM HERE AND THERE
and finally to remove it from the walls, it was so excit- ing and annoying to the occupants of the room. This recalls the weird and distressing story by Elia W. Peattie, The Yellow Wail-Paper. Its fantastic designs drove a poor wife to suicide. Ugh ! I can see her now, crawling around the room which was her prison.
I advise any one, who is blessed or cursed with a lively imagination to study a paper closely several times before purchasing, lest some demon with a malignant grin, or a black cat, or some equally exasperating face or design escape notice until too late. I once had a new paper removed because the innocent looking pattern, in time of sleepless anxiety, developed a savage's face with staring eyes, a flat nose, the grossest lips half open, the tongue protruding, and large round ear-rings in ears that looked like horns ! This, repeated all round my sick room, was unendurable.
But the old time papers are almost uniformly inspiring or amusing. What I most enjoy are my two papers which used to cover the huge band-boxes of two ancient dames, in which they kept their Leghorn pokes, calashes, and quilted "Pumpkin" hoods. One has a ground of Colonial yellow, on which is a stage-coach drawn by prancing steeds, driver on the top, whip in hand, and two passengers seen at the windows. A tav- ern with a rude swinging sign is in the background. The cover has a tropical scene — two Arabs with a giraffe. The other band-box has a fire engine and mem- bers of the "hose company," or whatever they called themselves, fighting a fire.
Papers with Biblical themes were quite common. In the fascinating biography of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady
93
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
Stanton, I find a detailed account of one. She says :
"When we reached Schenectady, the first city we children had ever seen, we stopped to dine at the old ' Given's Hotel,' where we broke loose from all the moorings of propriety on beholding the paper on the dining-room wall illustrating, in brilliant colors, some of the great events in sacred history. There were the patriarchs with flowing beards and in gorgeous attire; Abraham, offering up Isaac; Joseph, with his coat of many colors, thrown into a pit by his brethren ; Noah's Ark on an ocean of waters ; Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea; Rebecca at the well; and Moses in the bul- rushes.
" All these distinguished personages were familiar to us, and to see them here for the first time in living colors made silence and eating impossible. We dashed around the room, calling to each other : ' O, Kate, look here!' ' O, Madge, look there!' 'See little Moses!' 'See the angels on Jacob's ladder ! '
" Our exclamations could not be kept within bounds. The guests were amused beyond description, while my mother and elder sisters were equally mortified ; but Mr. Bayard, who appreciated our childish surprise and delight, smiled and said: ' I '11 take them around and show them the pictures, and then they will be able to dine,' which we finally did."
Inns often indulge in striking papers. A famous series of hunting scenes, called "The Eldorado," is now seen in several large hotels ; it has recently been put on in the Parker House, Boston. It was the joint work of two Alsatian artists, Ehrmann and Zipelius, and was printed from about two thousand blocks. The Zuber
94
NOTES FROM HERE AND THERE
family in Alsace has manufactured this spirited panel paper for over fifty years ; it has proved as profitable as a gold mine and is constantly called tor; I was shown a photograph of the descendants of the owner and a large crowd of workmen gathered to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the firm, which was established in 1797.
An old inn at Groton, Massachusetts, was mentioned as having curious papers, but they proved to be modern. The walls, I hear, were originally painted with land- scapes. This was an earlier style than scenic papers — akin to frescoing. A friend writes me :
"The odd papers now on the walls of Groton Inn have the appearance of being ancient, although the oldest is but thirty years old. Two of them are not even repro- ductions, as the one in the hall depicts the Paris Exposi- tion of i 876, and that in the office gives scenes from the life of Buffalo Bill.
" The Exposition has the principal buildings in the background, with a fountain, and a long night of steps in front leading to a street that curves round until it meets the same scene again. Persons of many nations, in char- acteristic dress, promenade the street. Pagodas and other unique buildings are dotted here and there. The entire scene is surrounded with a kind of frame of grasses and leaves, in somewhat of a Louis Quinze shape. Each one of these scenes has 'Paris Exposition, 1876,' printed on it, like a quack advertisement on a rock.
" The Wild West scenes include the log cabin, the stage coach held up, the wild riding, and the throwing of the lasso.
" The paper on the dining-room may be a reproduc- tion. It looks like Holland, although there are no
95
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
windmills. But the canal is there with boats and horses, other horses drinking, and men fishing ; also a Dutchy house with a bench outside the door. This paper looks as if it had been put on the walls a hundred years ago, but in reality it is the most recent of the three. The date of the beginning of the Inn itself is lost in the dim past, but we know it is more than two hundred years old. Tradition has it that there were originally but two rooms which were occupied by the minister."
When some one writes on our early inns, as has been done so charmingly for those of England, I prophecy that the queer papers of the long ago will receive enthusiastic attention.
Towns near a port, or an island like Nantucket, are sure to have fine old papers to show. A Nantucket woman, visiting the Art Museum in Boston some dozen years since, noticed an old paper there which was highly valued. Remembering that she had a roll of the very same style in her attic, she went home delighted, and proudly exhibited her specimen, which was, I believe, the motive power which started the Nantucket His- torical Society. I was presented with a piece ot the paper — a hand-painted design with two alternating pictures ; an imposing castle embowered in greenery, its towers and spires stretching far into the sky, and below, an ornate bridge, with a score of steps at the left, and below that the pale blue water. Engrossed lovers and flirtatious couples are not absent.
"A Peep at the Moon" comes from Nantucket. It reveals fully as much as our life-long students of that dead planet have been able to show us, and the inhabi- tants are as probable as any described as existing on Mars.
96
NOTES FROM HERE AND THEI*-E At Duxbury, Massachusetts, there are still t^0 mucn-
T T **
talked-of papers, in what is called the " Westo11
-now occupied by the Powder Point Scho°'- Mrs. Ezra Weston was a Bradford, and the story is tnat _ s paper was brought from Paris by her brother' ^aPtain Gershom Bradford. There is a continuous scene around the room, apparently from the environs of P^ris- Up- stairs, a small room is papered with the remafns or the " Pizarro " paper, which was formerly in tHe slttinS~ room opposite the parlor. This has tropical se'ttin£s a shows the same characters in more or less distinct about the wall. The paper was so strong tliat Jt was taken off the sitting-room in complete strips an" 1S now on a small upper chamber.
A stranger, who had heard of my collePtlon> sent a beautiful photograph with this glowing drscriPtlon '
" This wall-paper looks Oriental ; it is gi"- Arabs are leading camels, while horses are prancing proudly with their masters in the saddle as the crescen* mc fast sinking to rest in a cloudless sky. pountams are
' 1 A ' f
playing outside of the portal entrance to a bv11 Saracenic architecture, a quiet, restful scene, decidedly rich and impressive."
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, in his Story of a "a^ "°y* describes his grandfather's old home — the Nutter ' at Rivermouth, he calls it, but he doubtless has in min® some house at Portsmouth, his birthplace.
"On each side of the hall are doors (whc>se knobs' it must be confessed, do not turn very easily)' °Pe into large rooms wainscoted and rich in woor~carvmSs about the mantel-pieces and cornices. The wa^s are covered with pictured paper, representing lands'caPes an"
97
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
sea-views. In the parlor, for example, this enlivening group is repeated all over the room: — A group of Eng- lish peasants, wearing Italian hats, are dancing on a lawn that abruptly resolves itself into a sea-beach, upon which stands a flabby fisherman (nationality unknown), quietly hauling in what appears to be a small whale, and totally regardless of the dreadful naval combat going on just beyond the end of his fishing-rod. On the other side of the ships is the main-land again, with the same peasants dancing. Our ancestors were very worthy people, but their wall-papers were abominable."
With the paper on the little hall chamber which was the Bad Boy's own, he was quite satisfied, as any healthy-minded boy should have been :
" I had never had a chamber all to myself before, and this one, about twice the size of our state-room on board the Typhoon, was a marvel of neatness and com- fort. Pretty chintz curtains hung at the window, and a patch quilt of more colors than were in Joseph's coat covered the little truckle-bed. The pattern of the wall- paper left nothing to be desired in that line. On a gray background were small bunches of leaves, unlike any that ever grew in this world ; and on every other bunch perched a yellow-bird, pitted with crimson spots, as if it had just recovered from a severe attack of the small- pox. That no such bird ever existed did not detract from my admiration of each one. There were two hundred and sixty-eight of these birds in all, not count- ing those split in two where the paper was badly joined. I counted them once when I was laid up with a fine black eye, and falling asleep immediately dreamed that the whole flock suddenly took wing and flew out of the
98
NOTES FROM HERE AND THERE
window. From that time I was never able to regard them as merely inanimate objects."
One of the most spirited papers I have seen is a series of horse-racing scenes which once adorned the walls of the eccentric Timothy Dexter. Fragments of this paper are still preserved, framed, by Mr. T. E. Proctor of Topsfield, Mass. The drawing makes up in spirit what it lacks in accuracy, and the coloring leaves nothing to the imagination. The grass and sky are as green and blue as grass and sky can be, and the jockeys' colors could be distinguished from the most distant grand-stand.
This paper is a memento of the remarkable house of a remarkable man — Timothy Dexter, an eighteenth century leather merchant of Massachusetts, whose earn- ings, invested through advice conveyed to him in dreams, brought him a fortune. With this he was able to gratify his unique tastes in material luxuries. His house at Newburyport was filled with preposterous French furni- ture and second-rate paintings. On the roof were mina- rets decorated with a profusion of gold balls. In front of the house he placed rows of columns, some fifteen feet in height, surmounted by heroic wooden figures o± famous men. As his taste in great men changed he would have the attire and features of some statue modi- fied, so that General Morgan might one day find himself posing as Bonaparte. On a Roman circle before the entrance stood his permanent hero, Washington, sup- ported on the left by Jefferson, on the right by Adams, who was obliged to stand uncovered in all weathers, to suit Timothy's ideas of the respect due to General Washington. Four roaring wooden lions guarded this
99 14
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
Pantheon, and the figures were still standing when the great gale of 1815 visited Newburyport. Then the majority fell. The rest were sold for a song, and were scattered, serving as weather vanes and tavern signs.
Timothy Dexter wrote one book, which is now deservedly rare. This was A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, of which he published at least two editions. In this book he spoke his mind on all subjects; his biog- rapher, Samuel L. Knapp, calls it " a Galamathus of all the saws, shreds, and patches that ever entered the head of a motley fool, with items of his own history and
J J
family difficulties." His vanity, literary style and orthog- raphy may be seen in his assertion : " I me the first Lord in the Younited States of Amercary, now of Newbury- port. It is the voice of the peopel and I cant Help it." To the second edition of his Pickle he appended this paragraph : " Mister Printer the knowing ones complane of my book the first edition had no stops I put in A Nuf here and they may peper and solt it as they plese." A collection of quotation marks, or "stops" followed. "Lord Dexter," as he called himself and was called by one Jonathan Plummer, a parasitic versifier who chanted doggerel in his praise, was a picturesque charac- ter enough, and we are glad to have his memory kept green by these few remaining bits of paper from his walls.
VI
REVIVAL AND RESTORATION OF OLD PAPERS
VI
REVIVAL AND RESTORATION OF OLD PAPERS
IT WAS in 1880 that Clarence Cook said: "One can hardly estimate the courage it would take to own
that one liked an old-fashioned paper." How strange that sounds now, in 1905, when all the best manufacturers and sellers of wall-papers are reproducing the very old designs, for which they find a ready sale among the most fastidious searchers for the beautiful. One noted importer writes me :
"Yes, old time wall-papers are being revived, and no concern is taking more interest in the matter than ourselves. Many old designs, which had not been printed for thirty or forty years, have been taken up by us and done in colors to suit the taste of the period, and we find that few of the new drawings excel or even approach the old ones in interest.
"The glazed chintzes of the present day are all done over old blocks which had remained unused for half a century, and those very interesting fabrics are in the the original colorings, it having been found that any
103
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
new schemes of color do not seem to work so well." Sending recently to a leading Boston paper store for samples for my dining-room, and expressing no desire for old patterns, I received a reproduction of the paper on the hall of the old Longfellow house at Portland, Maine, and a design of small medallions of the real antique kind, — a shepherdess with her sheep and, at a little distance, a stiff looking cottage, presumably her abode, set on a shiny white ground marked with tiny tiles.
In fact, there is a general revival of these old designs, the original blocks often being used for re-print- ing. Go to any large store in any city to-day, where wall-papers are sold, and chintzes and cretonnes for the finest effects in upholstery. You will be shown, first, old- fashioned landscape papers; botanically impossible, but cheerful baskets of fruits and flowers ; or panels, with a pretty rococo effect of fairy-like garlands of roses swung back and forth across the openwork of the frame at each side, and suspended in garlands at top and bottom after French modes of the Louis XIV., XV. or XVI. periods. They are even reproducing the hand woven tapestries of Gobelin of Paris, during the latter part of the reign of Louis XIV., when French art was at its height.
In London Tit-Bits, I recently found something apropos: "'Here,' said a wall-paper manufacturer, 'are examples of what we call tapestry papers. They are copied exactly from the finest Smyrna and Turkish rugs, the colors and designs being reproduced with startling fidelity. We have men ransacking all Europe, copying paintings and mural decorations of past centuries. Here is the pattern of a very beautiful design of the time of Louis XVI., which we obtained in rather a curious
104
REVIVAL AND RESTORATION
way. One of our customers happened to be in Paris last summer, and being fond of inspecting old mansions, he one day entered a tumble-down chateau, which once belonged to a now dead and long forgotten Marquise. The rooms were absolutely in a decaying condition, but in the salon the wall-paper still hung, though in ribbons. The pattern was so exquisite in design, and the coloring, vivid still in many places, so harmonious, that he col- lected as many portions as he could and sent them to us to reproduce as perfectly as possible.
"We succeeded beyond his best hopes, and the actual paper is now hanging on the walls of a West End man- sion. We only manufactured sufficient to cover the ball- room, and it cost him two pounds a yard, but he never grumbled, and it was not dear, considering the difficulty we had."
An article in the Artist of London, September, 1898, by Lindsay P. Butterfield, describes a wonderful find of old paper and its restoration :
" Painted decoration, whether by hand or stencil, was, no doubt, the immediate forerunner of paper hang- ings. The earliest reference to paper hangings in this country is to be found in the inventory taken at ' the monasterye of S. Syxborough in the He of Shepey, in the Countie of Kent, by Syr Thomas Cheney, Syr William Hawle, Knyghts and Antony Slewtheger, Esquyer, the XXVII day of Marche, in XXVII the yeare of our Sov- eraigne Lorde, Kyng Henrye the VIII, of the goods and catall belongyng to sayde Monastery.'
" In this very interesting document, a minutely descriptive list of the ornaments, furniture and fittings of the nuns' chambers is given. We find from this that,
105
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
in place of the ' paynted clothes for the hangings of the chamber,' mentioned in most of the entries, under the heading of Dame Margaret Somebody's chamber is set down ' the chamber hangings of painted papers.'
"Wall-papers of Charles II. 's reign, and later, are still in existence; those at Ightham Mote, Kent, are well known instances.
" But so far as the writer is aware, the accompany- ing reproductions represent the oldest wall-papers now existing in England. They were found during the res- toration of a fifteenth century timber-built house, known as ' Borden Hall' or the 'Parsonage Farm,' in the village of Borden, near Sittingbourne, Kent.
" The design marked ' A ' was discovered in small fragments when the Georgian battening and wainscoats were removed in the first floor bedroom of the east front, in the oldest part of the house. These fragments showed that the tough paper had been originally nailed with flat- headed nails to the dried clay 'daubing' or plaster, with which the spaces between the timber uprights of the walls were filled in; the timbers themselves were painted a dark blue-grey, and a border of the same framed the strips of wall-paper. Owing to the walls having been battened out nearly two centuries ago, these fragments of a really striking design have been preserved to us.
"The design of 'B' was also found on the first floor, in the rear portion of the house. It had been pasted, in the modern manner, onto a large plaster surface. The walls on which it was found had been re-plastered over the original plastering and paper and thus the latter was preserved in perfect condition. The design and quality of the paper, and the mode of its attachment, point to
1 06
REVIVAL AND RESTORATION
a date of about 1650. ' A ' is probably of an earlier date (say 1550-1600) and is very thick and tough. The ornament is painted in black, on a rich vermilion ground, and the flower forms are picked out in a bright turquoise blue. ' B' is much more modern looking, both in tex- ture and design, and in both is very inferior to 'A.'
" Its coloring is meagre compared with the other, the ornament being printed in black on white paper, and the flower forms roughly dabbed with vermilion. The character of the design in both cases seems referable to Indian influence; possibly they were the work of an Indian artist, and were cut as blocks for cotton printing, an impression being taken off on paper and hung on the walls. The house is in course of restoration under the superintendence of Mr. Philip M. Johnston, architect, to whom I am indebted for some of the particulars above given. To the owner of Borden Hall, Lewis Levy, Esq., I am also indebted for permission to publish the designs which I have reproduced in facsimile from the original fragments. It is hoped shortly to hang the walls in the old manner with the reproduced papers."
I have copied from an 1859 edition of Rambles about Portsmouth, a strange story of the restoration of frescoes in the old Warner house at Portsmouth, New Hampshire:
" At the head of the stairs, on the broad space each side of the hall windows, there are pictures of two Indians, life size, highly decorated and executed by a skillful artist. These pictures have always been on view there, and are supposed to represent some Indian with whom the original owner traded in furs, in which busi- ness he was engaged. In the lower hall of the house are
107 is
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
still displayed the enormous antlers of an elk, a gift from these red men.
" Not long since, the spacious front entry underwent repairs; there had accumulated four coatings of paper. In one place, on removing the under coating, the picture of a horse was discovered by a little girl. This led to further investigation ; the horse of life size was devel- oped ; a little further work exhumed Governor Phipps on his charger. The process of clearing the walls was now entered upon in earnest, as if delving in the ruins of Pompeii.
"The next discovery was that of a lady at a spinning wheel (ladies span in those days! ) who seems interrupted in her work by a hawk lighting among the chickens.
" Then came a Scripture scene; Abraham offering up Isaac ; the angel, the ram, and so on. There is a distant city scene, and other sketches on the walls, covering per- haps four or five hundred square feet. The walls have been carefully cleaned, and the whole paintings, evidently the work of some clever artist, are now presented in their original beauty.
"No person living had any knowledge of the hidden paintings; they were as novel to an old lady of eighty, who had been familiar with the house from her child- hood, as to her grand-daughter who discovered the horse's foot. The rooms are furnished with panelled walls and the old Dutch tiles still decorate the fireplace."
It is gratifying to note that as these old frescoes and wall-papers are ruthlessly destroyed by those unaware of their value (which will constantly increase), there are those who insist on their preservation and reproduction. President Tucker of Dartmouth College, for instance,
ioH
REVIVAL AND RESTORATION
has forbidden the removal of the Bay of Naples landscape from the walls of what was formerly the library of Pro- fessor Sanborn at Hanover, New Hampshire. The house is now used as a dormitory, but that paper is treated with decided reverence.
Reproduction of a tine paper worn, soiled and torn is an expensive matter, but those who realize their beauty order them if the price per roll is six or ten dollars. One of the most delightful papers of the present season is one copied from a French paper originally on the walls of a Salem house and known to have been there for over one hundred years. It is charming in design, with land- scapes and flowers, twenty-eight different colors in all, and that means much when it is understood that every color must be printed from a different block when the paper is made.
The paper is brilliant in effect, with many bright colored flowers, pink hollyhocks in a warm rose shade, purple morning glories, some blue blossoms and two dif- ferent water scenes set deep into the mass of flowers, the scenes themselves of delicate tones and wonderful per- spective. The original paper was in pieces twenty inches wide by twenty-eight long, which shows it to be very old. This reproduction will be seen on the walls in houses of Colonial style in Newport this summer.
Yes, summer tourists are looking up old walls to gaze at with admiration. Many have found a Mecca in the Cleasby Place at Waterford, Vermont. Hardly a summer Sunday passes without a wagon load of persons going from Littleton towards the Connecticut River on a pilgrimage to Waterford and the Cleasby House. This house is said to be one of only three in New
109
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
England which possess a certain wonderful old paper of strange design. The paper, a combination of brown and cream, bears scenes that evidently found their origin in foreign countries, but there are diverse opinions as to the nation whose characteristics are thereon depicted so realistically. An old house at Rockville, Massachusetts, still boasts this same paper, while the third example is on the walls of the Badger homestead, described on page 77. Plates XLVIII to L give scenes from these papers.
The Cleasby house was regarded, in the olden times, as the great mansion in this locality. There was noth- ing riner than the residence in any of the surrounding towns. The structure was erected by Henry Oakes, an old-time settler in Northern Vermont, whose relatives still reside near by. The paper was put on at the time the house was built and cost one hundred dollars. A paper-hanger came up from Boston to put it on prop- erly, and this cost the owner an extra forty dollar check. In those days, the coming of a paper-hanger from Boston was regarded quite in the light of an event, and a hundred dollars expended for wall-paper stamped a man as a capitalist.
The house is still well preserved and shows no sug- gestion of being a ruin, although approaching the century mark. The present owner has been offered a large sum for this beautiful old paper, but wisely prefers to hold her treasure.
Paper-hangers to-day are returning, in some cases, to the hand-printing of fine papers, because they insist that there are some advantages in the old method to compensate for the extra work. To go back a bit, the earliest method of coloring paper hangings was
REVIVAL AND RESTORATION
by stencilling. A piece of pasteboard, with the pattern cut out on it, was laid on the paper, and water colors were freely applied with a brush to the back of the pasteboard, so that the colors came through the open- ings and formed the pattern on the paper. This process was repeated several times for the different colors and involved a great expenditure of labor. It was replaced by the method of calico-printing, which is now gener- ally used in the manufacture of wall-paper, that is, by blocks and later by rollers. And why, you naturally ask, this return to the slow and laborious way ?
Mr. Rottman, of the London firm of Alexander Rottman 6t Co., a high authority on this theme, in an able lecture given at his studio in London, explains the reasons in a way so clear that any one can understand. He says :
" In an age where needles are threaded by machin- ery at the rate of nearly one per second ; where em- broideries are produced by a machine process which reverses the old method in moving the cloth up to fixed needles ; where Sunlight Soap is shaped, cut, boxed, packed into cases, nailed up, labelled, and even sent to the lighters by machinery, so that hand labour is almost entirely superseded ; it seems odd and, in fact, quite out of date and uncommercial to print wall-papers entirely by hand process.
"The up-to-date wall-paper machine turns out most wonderful productions. It is able to imitate almost any fabric; tapestries, Gobelins, laces, and even tries to copy artistic stencilling in gradated tints. It manages to deceive the inartistic buyer to a large extent, in fact, there is hardly any fabric that the modern demand for
1 1 1
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
' sham ' does not expect the wall-paper machine to imitate.
" However, in spite of all these so-called achieve- ments, the modest hand-printing table that existed at the time of wigs and snuff-boxes is still surviving more or less in its old-fashioned simple construction. And why is this so?" He then explains why a hand-printed paper is always preferred to a machine paper by the person of taste, whose purse is not too slender. Seven reasons are given for their artistic superiority.
" i . Machine papers can be printed in thin colours only, which means a thin, loose colour effect.
" 2. In machine papers the whole of the various colours are printed at one operation, one on the top of another. In hand-printed papers, no colours touch each other until dry, and so each colour remains pure.
" 3. Large surfaces, such as big leaves, large flat flowers, broad stripes that have to be printed in one colour, are never successful in machines, wanting solidity of colour. Hand-printed papers run no such risk.
"4. The machine limits the variety of papers to the flat kind; to flat surfaces supplied by the paper mills in reels.
" 5. Flaws, irregularities, and so on, when occur- ring in machine goods, run through many yards, owing to the necessary rapidity of printing, and the difficulty of stopping the machine; whilst every block repeat of pattern in the hand-printed goods is at once visible to the printer, who rectifies any defect before printing another impression, and so controls every yard.
"6. The hand-printed papers, being printed from wood blocks (only dots and thin lines subject to injury
I 1 2
REVIVAL AND RESTORATION
being inserted in brass) show more softness in the printing than papers printed from machine rollers that have to be made in brass.
" 7. The preparation of getting the machine colours in position, and setting the machine ready for printing, necessitates the turning out of at least a ream, or a half ream (five hundred or two hundred and fifty rolls) at once; whilst the equivalent in hand-printing is fifty to sixty rolls. It often happens that the design of a machine paper is approved of, whilst the colourings it is printed in are unsuited to the scheme. By the hand process, room quantities of even ten to fifteen pieces can be printed specially at from i 5 per cent, to 20 per cent, advance in price, while the increase in cost for such a small quantity in machine paper would send up the price to ridiculous proportions."
The use of brass pins in the wood blocks is also a revival of the old method, as you will see from this inter- esting paragraph from a recent volume — Lewis F. Day's Ornament and Its ^Application :
" Full and crowded pattern has its uses. The com- paratively fussy detail, which demeans a fine material, helps to redeem a mean one.
" Printed wall-paper, for example, or common calico, wants detail to give it a richness which, in itself, it has not. In printed cotton, flat colours look dead and lifeless. The old cotton printers had what they called a 'pruning roller,' a wooden roller (for hand-printing) into which brass pins or wires were driven. The dots printed from this roller relieved the flatness of the printed colours, and gave ' texture' to it. William Morris adopted this idea of dotting in his cretonne and wall-paper design
"3
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
with admirable effect. It became, in his hands, an admir- able convention, in place of natural shading. The inter- est of a pattern is enhanced by the occurrence at intervals of appropriate figures ; but with every recurrence of the same figure, human or animal, its charm is lessened until, at last, the obvious iteration becomes, in most cases, exasperating.
"And yet, in the face of old Byzantine, Sicilian, and other early woven patterns with their recurring ani- mals, and of Mr. Crane's consummately ornamental patterns, it cannot be said that repeated animal (and even human) forms do not make satisfactory pattern.
" For an illustration of this, look at the wall-paper design by Crane: 'This is the House that Jack built.' It seems, at first glance, to be a complicated ornamental design ; after long searching, you at last see plainly every one of the characters in that jingle that children so love."
William Morris, and his interest in wall-paper hanging, must be spoken of, " For it was Morris who made this a truly valuable branch of domestic ornamenta- tion. If, in some other instances, he was rather the restorer and infuser of fresh life into arts fallen into degeneracy, he was nothing short of a creator in the case of wall-paper design, which, as a serious decorative art, owes its existence to him before anyone else."
In his lecture on The Lesser Arts of Life, he insisted on the importance of paying due regard to the artistic treatment of our wall spaces. " Whatever you have in your rooms, think first of the walls, for they are that which makes your house and home ; and, if you do n't make some sacrifice in their favor, you will find your chambers have a sort of makeshift, lodging-house look
114
REVIVAL AND RESTORATION
about them, however rich and handsome your movables may be."
A collector is always under a spell; hypnotized, bewitched, possibly absurdly engrossed and unduly partial to his own special hobby, and to uninterested spectators, no doubt seems a trifle unbalanced, whether his specialty be the fossilized skeleton of an antediluvian mammoth or a tiny moth in a South American jungle.
I am not laboring under the exhilarating but erro- neous impression that there is any widespread and absorb- ing interest in this theme. As the distinguished jurist, Mr. Adrian H. Joline, says, "Few there are who cling with affection to the memory of the old fashioned. Most of us prefer to spin with the world down the ringing grooves of change, to borrow the shadow of a phrase which has of itself become old-fashioned." Yet, as Mr. Webster said of Dartmouth, when she was hard pressed : " It is a little college, but there are those who love it."
Besides, everything - - Literature, Art and even fashions in dress and decorations, — while seeming to progress really go in waves. We are now wearing the bonnets, gowns and mantles of the 1830 style and much earlier. Fabulous and fancy prices are gladly given for antique furniture; high boys, low boys, hundred-legged tables, massive four-post bedsteads, banjo clocks, and crys- tal chandeliers.
Those able to do it are setting tapestries into their stately walls, hangings of rich brocades and silk are again in vogue and the old designs for wall-paper are being hunted up all through Europe and this country. Some also adopt a colored wash for their bedroom walls, and
H5 16
OLD TIME WALL PAPERS
cover their halls with burlap or canvas, while the skins of wild animals adorn city dens as well as the mountain lodge or the seaside bungalow. So we have completed the circle.
The unco rich of to-day give fabulous sums for crystal candelabra, or museum specimens of drawing room furniture ; and collectors, whether experts or ama- teurs, and beginners iust infected with the microbe are searching for hidden treasures of china, silver and glass.
Why should the Old Time Wail-Papers alone be left unchronicled and forgotten ? In them the educated in such matters read the progress of the Art ; some of them are more beautiful than many modern paintings ; the same patterns are being admired and brought out; the papers themselves will soon all be removed.
Hawthorne believed that the furniture of a room was magnetized by those who occupied it; a modern psychologist declares that even a rag doll dearly loved by a child becomes something more than a purely inanimate object. We should certainly honor the wall-papers brought over the seas from various countries at great expense to beautify the Homes of our Ancestors.
116
PUBLISHER'S NOTE.
The wall-papers reproduced in the following plates were in many cases faded, water-stained and torn, when photo- graphed. Many of the photographs are amateur work ; some are badly focused and composed, some taken in small rooms and under unfavorable conditions of light. The reader will hear this in mind in judging the papers themselves and the present reproductions.
PLATE VII
PLATE VIII
PLATE VII. The Bayeux Tapestry.
The oldest tapestry now in existence, dating from the time of William the Conqueror, and apparently of Eng- lish workmanship. The set of pieces fits the nave of the Cathedral of Bayeux, measuring 231 feet long and 20 inches wide. Now preserved in the Bayeux Library. The subjects are drawn from English history ; Plate VII represents the burial of Edward the Confes- sor in the Church of St. Peter, Westminster Abbey.
PLATE VIII. The Bayeux Tapestry.
King Harold listening to news of the preparations of William of Orange for the invasion of Britain.
PLATE IX
PLATE X
PLATE IX. Borden Hall Paper.
The oldest wall-paper known in England ; found in re- storing a fifteenth-century timber-built house known as " Borden Hall," in Borden village, Kent, near Sitting- bourne.
Design "A" was found in the oldest part of the house, and probably dates from the second halt of the sixteenth century. The paper is thick and tough, and was nailed to the plaster between uprights. The walls were afterward battened over the paper, and the recov- ered fragments are in perfect condition. Ground color rich vermillion, with flowers in bright turquoise blue, the design in black.
PLATE X. Borden Hall Paper.
Old English paper, design " B "; found in rear part of house and dates from about 1650. It was pasted to the plaster in the modern manner. Printed in black on a white ground, flowers roughly colored vermillion. In- ferior to "A" in design, coloring, and quality of paper.
PLATE XI
18
PLATE XI. Early English Pictorial Paper
Late eighteenth century hunting scene paper from an old Manor House near Chester, England. Reproduced from a fragment in the collection of Mr. Edward T. Cock- croft of New York City. The pattern is evidently re- peated at intervals.
PLATE XII
PLATE XII. The Cultivation of Tea.
Hand-painted Chinese paper, imported about 1750 and still in good state of preservation ; the property of Mr. Theodore P. Burgess of Dedham, Mass. The suh- ject is perhaps the oldest theme used in wall-paper deco- ration in China.
PLATE XIII
PLATE XIF
PLATE XIII. The Cultivation of Tea. Paper on another side of room shown in Plate XII.
PLATE XIV. The Cultivation of Tea.
Third side of same room. The scene continues round the room without repetition.
PLATE XV
PLATE XVI
PLATE XV. Early American Fresco.
Painted river scenes on the best chamber walls of the house of Mrs. William Allen at Westwood, Mass. The elm and locust trees and architectural style are plainly American, but the geographical location is uncertain. The colors are very brilliant — red, blue, green, etc.
PLATE XVI. Early American Fresco.
Another side of same room, showing conventionalized water fall and bend in the river.
PLATE AT II
PL ATE AT II I
20
PLATE XVII. Early American Fresco.
Another view of the painted walls at Westwood, Mass. The object depicted is neither a whale nor a torpedo- boat, but an island.
PLATE XVIII. Early American Fresco.
Painted hall and stairway in an old house in High Street, Salem, Mass., attached to the very old bake-shop ol Pease and Price. The frescoes were executed by a Frenchman. Colors are still quite bright, but a good photograph could not be secured in the small and dimly- lighted hall.
7
PLATE XIX
PLATE XX
PLATE XIX. Early Stencilled Paper. Fragments of very old paper from Nantucket, R. I.
PLATE XX.
A Peep at the Moon.
Another quaint stencilled paper found at Nantucket, R. I.
I
—
PLATE XXI
PLATE XXI. Pictured Ruins and Decorative Designs.
Hall of a homestead at Salem, Massachusetts, old when gas lights were introduced in Salem. The paper was undoubtedly made to fit the stairway and hall. The large picture in the lower hall is repeated at the landing.
PLATE XXII
PLATE XXII. Hand Colored Paper with Repeated Pattern.
Parlor in the home of Mrs. Russell Jarvis at Claremont, New Hampshire. The paper is hand-printed on cream ground in snuff-brown color, and is made up of pieces eighteen inches square, showing three alternating pastoral scenes. In the frieze and dado the prevailing color is dark blue. (p. 56)
PLATE XX III
PL ATE X XIJ7
PLATE XXIII. Scenes from Nature in Repeated Design.
Parlor of the Lindell house at Salem, Massachusetts. White wainscoting and mantel surmounted by paper in squares, showing four outdoor scenes. The fire-board concealing the unused fire-place is covered with paper and border specially adapted to that purpose.
PLATE XXIV. The Alhambra.
Two scenes from the Alhambra Palace, repeated in somewhat monotonous rows. Still in a good state of preservation on the upper hall of a house at Leicester, Massachusetts, — one of the sea-port towns rich in foreign novelties brought home by sea captains.
PLATE XXV
PLATE A" AT/
PLATE XXV. Cathedral Porch and Shrine in Repeated Design.
Effectively colored paper still on the walls at Ware, Massachusetts, showing a shrine in the porch of a cathe- dral ; the repeated design being connected with columns, winding stairs and ruins. The blue sky seen through the marble arches contrasts finely with the green foliage.
PLATE XXVI. Cathedral Porch and Shrine, Architectural Background.
Paper on a chamber in the mansion of Governor Gore of Massachusetts, at Waltham, Massachusetts, erected and decorated in 1802. Medallion pictures in neutral colors, of a cathedral porch, shrine and mountain view, alternat- ing on a stone-wall ground.
PLATE XXI'II
PLATE XXVII. Birds of Paradise and Peacocks.
The drawing-room of the Governor Gore Mansion at Waltham, Massachusetts, bequeathed by its owner, Miss Walker, to the Episcopal Church for the Bishop's resi- dence. The paper is still in beautiful condition, printed on brownish cream ground in the natural colors of birds and foliage. (p. 75 )
j&i^lS
fr -tv/
P*rȣ Sfe
• - ' • • 1-v
A
PLATE xxrni
PLATE XXVIII. Sacred to Washington.
Memorial paper in black and gray placed on many walls soon after the death of Washington. The example photographed was on a hall and stairway, (p. 88)
'~-" *"
PL ATE XX IX
PLATE XXIX. Dorothy Quincy Wedding Paper.
On the Dorothy Quincy house on Hancock Street, at Quincy, Mass., now the headquarters of the Colonial Dames of Massachusetts. It was imported from Paris in honor of the marriage of Dorothy Quincy and John Hancock in 1775, and still hangs on the walls of the large north parlor. Venus and Cupid are printed in blue, the floral decorations in red. The colors are still unfaded. (p. 65)
PLATE XXX
PLATE XXXI
PLATE XXX. The Pantheon.
Mounted fragments rescued from the destruction of the dining-room paper which was on the walls of the King's Tavern or "Waffle Tavern" at Vernon (now Rockville), Connecticut, when Lafayette was entertained there in 1825. All the characters of Roman mythology were pictured in woodland scenes printed in gray and black, on small squares of paper carefully matched. Below these ran a band bearing the names of the characters represented ; and below this, a grassy green dado dotted with marine pictures, (p. 69)
PLATE XXXI. Canterbury Bells.
Paper from Howe's Tavern, at Sudbury, Massachusetts, -the "Wayside Inn" of Longfellow's Tales. The fragment is in poor condition but possesses historic inter- est, having decorated the room in which Lafayette passed the night on his trip through America, (p. 67)
PLATE XX XII
PLATE XXXIII
PLATE XXXII. The First Railroad Locomotive.
Paper on an old house in High Street, Salem, supposed to represent the rirst railroad. The rirst trial of loco- motives for any purpose other than hauling coal from the mines, took place near Rainhill, England, in 1829. The paper may celebrate this contest, at which only one of three engines was successful, (p. 89-90)
PLATE XXXIII. High Street House Paper.
Scene on opposite side of same room. The subject and figures seem English. The scenes are in colors, the dado in black and grey on white ground.
(MAI
PLATE XXXir
PLATE XXX
PLATE XXXIV. Pizarro in Peru.
Remains of Pizarro paper in the Ezra Weston house now used for the famous Powder Point School for Boys, at Duxbury, Massachusetts. Formerly on sitting-room but now preserved in a small upper room; stained and dim. It was brought from Paris by Captain Gershom Bradford, and is supposed to depict scenes in Pizarro's invasion of Peru in 1531. The same figures are shown in succes- sive scenes, more or less distinct though running into each other. (p. 97)
PLATE XXXV. Pizarro in Peru.
Another corner o± same room. Both the paper and photograph are difficult to reproduce.
PLATE XXXVI
PLATE XXXVII
PLATE XXXVI. Tropical Scenes.
Paper from the Ham House at Peabody, Massachusetts, now occupied by Dr. Worcester. These scenes are quite similar to those of the Pizarro paper, and may have been the work of the same designer.
PLATE XXXVII. Tropical Scenes. Ham house paper. Another side of room.
PL ATE XX XV HI
PLATE XXXIX
PLATE XXXVIII. On the Bosporus.
From a house at Montpelier, Vermont, in which it was hung in 1825, in honor of Lafayette who was enter- tained there. The Mosque of Santa Sophia and other buildings of Constantinople are seen in the background.
PLATE XXXIX. On the Bosporus.
Opposite side of same room. Fishing from caiques on the Golden Horn before Stamboul.
PLATE XL
PLATE XL. Oriental Scenes.
Paper still on the walls of the home of Miss Janet A. Lathrop, at Stockport, New York. It was put on the walls in 1820 by the sea captain who built the house, and in 1904 was cleaned and restored by the present owner. No other example of this paper in America has been heard of, except in an old house at Albany in which the mother of Miss Lathrop was born. In the " Chinese room" of a hunting lodge belonging to the King of Saxony, at Moritzburg, near Dresden, is a similar paper or tapestry from which this may have been copied. It is printed in grays which have become brown with age, from engraved blocks, and finished by hand. This is a rare example of the use of rice paper for a wall cover- ing- (P- 55)
PLATE XLI
PLATE XLI. Oriental Scenes.
Continuation of same paper; apparently a religious pro- cession.
PLATE XLII
PLATE XLII. Oriental Scenes. Another section of the Lathrop house paper.
PLATE XLIII
Pl.ATF. XLIII
Oriental Scenes. End of room containing three preceding scenes
PLATE XLIV
PLATE XLIV. Early Nineteenth Century Scenic Paper.
Side wall of parlor of Mrs. E. C. Cowles at Deerfield, Massachusetts. The house was built in 1738 by Ebenezer Hinsdale, and was re-modelled and re-decorated about the beginning of the nineteenth century. Still in good state of preservation. The colors are neutral.
PLATE XLV
PLATE XLV. Parlor of Mrs. Cowles' house, end of room.
PLATE XLVI
PLATE XLV1I
PLATE XLVI.
Another example of the same paper as that on the Cowles house (Plates XLIV and XLV). This paper was imported from England and hung in 1805, in a modest house at Warner, New Hampshire, — such a house as seldom indulged in such expensive papers. It is still on the walls, though faded.
PLATE XLVII.
At Windsor, Vermont, two more examples of this paper are still to be seen. One is on the house now occupied by the Sabin family. This was built about 1810 by the Honorable Edward R. Campbell, and the paper was hung when the house was new. (p. 52)
I
PLATE XLVlll
PLATE X LI X
PLATE XLVIII.
,* Harbor Scene.
Paper found in three houses in New England — the home of Mr. Wilfred Cleasby at Waterford, Vermont; the Governor Badger homestead at Gilmanton, New Hamp- shire, built in 1825; and an old house in Rockville, Massachusetts, built about ninety years ago. The scene tits the four walls of the room without repetition. The design is printed in browns on a cream ground, with a charming effect. The geographical identity of the scenes has never been established. (p. 109)
PLATE XLIX. The Spanish Fandango. Continuation of same paper; another side of room.
PLATE L
PLATE L. Strolling Players.
Same paper, third view. The set of paper on the Cleasby house is said by descendants of the builder, Henry Oakes, to have cost $100, and $40 for its hanging. The simi- lar set on the Badger homestead should have cost $50, had not the messenger lost the first payment sent, so that that sum had to be duplicated. This is on a smaller room than at the Cleasby house, requiring less paper. (p. 76-80)
!
•i] ' :
mm
II
PLATE LI
PLATE LI I
PLATE LI. Rural Scene.
Paper on the parlor of Mr. Josiah Cloye at Ashland, Massachusetts, and found also in several other places; colors neutral.
PLATE LII. Rural Scene.
From another example of the same set found at Marble- head, Massachusetts.
PLATE LI 1 1
PLATE LIT
PLATE LIII. French Boulevard Scene.
Paper from the Forrester house at Salem, Massachusetts, now used as a sanitarium for the insane. Since the photo- graphs were taken the paper has been removed as it unduly excited the patients.
PLATE LIV. French Boulevard Scene.
Same as above. Found also in a house at the sea-port town of Nantucket.
RF"
PLATE L1r
PLATE LV. Gateway and Fountain.
French paper, imported before 1800, but never hung. A few rolls still survive, in the possession of Mr. George M. Whipple of Salem, Massachusetts.
1
PLATE LVI
33
PLATE LVI. Scenes from Paris.
A very popular paper found in Federal Street, Salem, on the parlor of Mrs. Charles Sadler, daughter of Henry K. Oliver ; in the Ezra Western house at Duxbury, Massa- chusetts, built in 1808; the Walker house at Rockville, Massachusetts, and several other New England towns. The principal buildings of Paris are represented as lining the shore of the Seine. The inclusion of the Colonne Vendome shows it to have been designed since i 806 ; and as the horses on the Carousal arch were returned to Venice in 1814, the paper probably dates between those years. (p. 88 )
PLATE
PLATE LVII. Scenes from Paris.
Another side of room shown in Plate LVI. The paper is in pieces 1 6 by 21 inches. The colors are soft, with green, gray and brown predominating, but with some black, yellow, red, etc. The drawing is good.
p
PLATE LF III
34
PLATE LVIII. Bay of Naples.
This seems to have been the most popular paper of the early nineteenth century. It decorated the room in which the author was born — the library of Professor E. D. Sanborn of Dartmouth College, at Hanover, New Hamp- shire,— and is still in place. The house is now used as a Dartmouth dormitory. The same scenes are found in the Lawrence house, at Exeter, New Hampshire, now used as a dormitory — Dunbay Hall — of the Phillips Exeter Academy; on the house of Mrs. E. B. McGinley at Dudley, Massachusetts, and on another at St. Johnsbury, Vermont, now owned by Mrs. Emma Taylor, (p. 49, 108)
PLATE LIX
PLATE LIX. Bay of Naples.
Continuation of same scene. This paper is in neutral colors, and made in small pieces. It was imported about 1820.
PLATE LX
35
PLATE LX. Bay of Naples.
Detail. The monument has a Greek inscription which Professor Kittredge of Harvard University translates lit- erally : " Emperor Cssar, me divine Hadrian. Column of the Emperor Antoninus Pius" -who was the son of Hadrian. The pillar of Antonine still stands at Rome. The statue of Antoninus which formerly surmounted it was removed by Pope Sextus, who substituted a figure of Paul.
PLATE LXI
PLATE LXI I
PLATE LXI. Bay of Naples. Another side of room.
PLATE LXII. Bay of Naples. Detail : Galleon at anchor.
PLATE LXIII
PLATE LXIII. Cupid and Psyche.
Panelled paper in colors, designed by Lafitte and exe- cuted by Dufour in 1814. It consists of twenty-six breadths, each five feet seven inches long by twenty inches wide. It is said that fifteen hundred engraved blocks were used in printing. The design is divided into twelve panels, depicting the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, Psyche's lack of faith and its sad consequences. The scene reproduced shows the visit of the newly- wedded Psyche's jealous sisters to her palace, where they persuade her that her unseen husband is no god, but a monster whom she must kill.
PLATE LXIV
PLATE LXIV. Cupid and Psyche.
While Cupid lies sleeping in the darkness, Psyche takes her dagger, lights her lamp, and bends over the uncon- scious god :
* * There before her lay
The very Love brighter than dawn of day;
***** O then, indeed, her faint heart swelled for love, And she began to sob, and tears feli fast Upon the bed.— But as she turned at last To quench the lamp, there happed a little thing, That quenched her new delight, for flickering The treacherous flame cast on his shoulder fair A burning drop; he woke, and seeing her there, The meaning of that sad sight knew too well, Nor was there need the piteous tale to tell.
WILLIAM MORRIS : The Earthly Paradise.
T^:,:V
£
PLATE LXV
37
PLATE LXV. The Adventures of Telemachus.
Paper from the home of Dr. John Lovett Morse at Taunton, Massachusetts, illustrating the sixth book of Fenelon's Adventures of Telemachus. Found also in the home of Mr. Henry De Witt Freeland at Sutton, Massa- chusetts; on the hall of "The Hermitage," Andrew Jackson's home near Nashville, Tennessee; and in an ancient house at Kennehunk, Maine. (p. 86-88)
Telemachus, son of Ulysses, and Mentor, who is Minerva in disguise, while searching through two worlds lor the lost Ulysses, arrive at the island of the goddess Calypso and her nymphs. Telemachus recites the tale of their adventures, and Calypso (who is unfortunately divided by the window into two equal parts) becomes as deeply enamored of Telemachus as she had formerly been of his father.
PLATE LXVI
PLATE LXVI. The Adventures of Telemachus.
Venus, who is bent on detaining Telemachus on the island and delaying his filial search for Ulysses, brings her son Cupid from Olympos, and leaves him with Calypso, that he may inflame the young hero's heart with love for the goddess.
PLATE LXF1I
PLATE LXVII. The Adventures of Telemachus.
Cupid stirs up all the inflammable hearts within his reach somewhat indiscriminately; and Telemachus finds him- self in love with the nymph Eucharis. Calypso becomes exceedingly jealous. At a hunting-contest in honor of Telemachus, Eucharis appears in the costume of Diana to attract him, while the jealous Calypso rages alone in her grotto. Venus arrives in her dove-drawn car and takes a hand in the game of hearts.
PLATE LXVlll
PLATE LXVIII. Adventures of Teiemachus.
Calypso, in her rage against Eucharis and Teiemachus, urges Mentor to build a boat and take Teiemachus from her island. Mentor, himself disapproving of the youth's infatuation, builds the boat; then finds Teiemachus and persuades him to leave Eucharis and embark with him. As they depart toward the shore, Eucharis returns to her companions, while Teiemachus looks behind him at every step for a last glimpse of the nymph.
PLATE LXIX
39
PLATE LXIX. Adventures of Telemachus.
Cupid meantime has dissuaded Calypso from her wrath and incited the nymphs to burn the boat that is waiting to bear the visitors away. Mentor, perceiving that Tele- machus is secretly glad of this, and fearing the effect of his passion for Eucharis, throws the youth from the cliff into the water, leaps in alter him, and swims with him to a ship that lies at anchor beyond the treacherous shoals.
PLATE LXX
PLATE LXX. Scottish Scenes.
The room on which the Adventures of Telemachus are pictured having proved too large for the set of scenes, the remaining corner is filled out with what appear to be Scottish scenes, possibly illustrations for Scott. Harmony in coloring was apparently of more importance than harmony in subject.
PLATE LX XI
PLATE LXXI1
PLATE LXXI. The Olympic Games.
This famous paper, now owned by Mrs. Franklin R. Webber 2d of Boston, was made in France and imported in 1800 or earlier, but never hung. Each roll is made up of squares invisibly joined, and the thirty pieces com- bine to form a continuous panorama. The coloring is brown. The paper was probably printed by hand from engraved blocks, and the shading of faces, etc., added by hand. The most artistic pictorial paper known. (p.
52-54)
PLATE LXXII. The Olympic Games. A tribute to Homer.
I
'if... :' iJS ,
PLATE LXXIIl
PLATE LXXIV
PLATE LXXIII. The Olympic Games. The shrine of Vesta.
PLATE LXXIV.
The Olympic Games.
Worshipping Athene in the Court of the Erechtheum.
PLATE LXXV
PLATE LXXri
PLATE LXXV. The Olympic Games. Oblation to Bacchus.
PLATE LXXVI. The Olympic Games.
Oblation to Bacchus, and procession before the Parthe- non. From the Perry house at Keene, N. H., on whose parlor walls is preserved the only other known example of the paper just described. (p. 50)
PLATE LXXVll
PLATE LXXVII. The Lady of the Lake.
This series of scenes in neutral colors is photographed from the parlor of the Rev. Pelham Williams, at Green- bush, Mass., whose house is one of three on which it still hangs in good condition. The other examples are the Hayward house at Wayland, Mass., and the Alexan- der Ladd house, now owned by Mrs. Charles Wentworth, at Portsmouth, N. H.
CANTO I. THE CHASE. III.
Yelled on the view the opening pack- Rock, glen, and cavern paid them back ; To many a mingled sound at once The awakened mountain gave response. An hundred dogs bayed deep and strong, Clattered a hundred steeds along, Their peal the merry horns rang out, An hundred voices joined the shout ; With bark, and whoop, and wild halloo, No rest Benvoirlich's echoes knew.
PLATE L.YATIII
PLATE LXXVIII.
v/
The Lady of the Lake.
CANTO III. THE GATHERING. VIII.
'Tvvas all prepared -and from the rock, A goat, the patriarch of the flock, Before the kindling pile was laid, And pierced by Roderick's ready blade.
The grisly priest with murmuring prayer, A slender crosslet framed with care.
:;: * * *
The cross, thus formed, he held on high, With wasted hand and haggard eye, And strange and mingled feelings woke, While his anathema he spoke.
IX.
He paused — the word the vassals took, With forward step and fiery look, On high their naked brands they shook, Their clattering targets wildly strook ; And first, in murmur low, Then, like the billow in his course. That far to seaward finds his source, And flings to shore his mustered force, Burst with loud roar, their answer hoarse, " Woe to the traitor, woe ! '
PLATE LXXIX
PLATE LXXIX. The Lady of the Lake.
j
CANTO IV. THE PROPHECY. XXI.
[Blanche of Devan and Fitz-James]
Now wound the path its dizzy ledge Around a precipice's edge, When lo ! a wasted female form, Blighted by wrath of sun and storm, In tattered weeds and wild array, Stood on a cliff beside the way, And glancing round her restless eye Upon the wood, the rock, the sky, Seemed nought to mark, yet all to spy. Her brow was wreathed with gaudy broom ; With gesture wild she waved a plume Of feathers, which the eagles fling To crag and cliff from dusky wing; * * -f *
And loud she laughed when near they drew, For then the lowland garb she knew: And then her hands she wildly wrung, And then she wept, and then she sung.
PLATE LXXX
43
PLATE LXXX.
This scene fills the fourth side of the room on which The Lady of the Lake is pictured, but does not illustrate any scene in the poem.
PLATE LXXXI
PLATE LXXXI. The Seasons.
Pastoral paper in neutral colors on the library of Prof. Ira Young of Dartmouth, at Hanover, N. H. The four seasons are represented on different sides of the room, blending into each other — sowing, haying, harvesting and sleighing. Still on the walls in good state of pre- servation, (p. 49)
PLATE LX XXII
44
PLATE LXXXII.
The Seasons.
i/
Another view of Professor Young's library. The colors in this paper are neutral.
PLATE LX XXIII
PLATE LXXXIII.
The Seasons. Third view from Professor Young's library.
-
FROM THE BO'"
\l '•* *
• -
•.
,
!
'
•
:
:
.
..
<
,
.
98 m? »
-
i
II V. ,
.
'•
R.JWLM 1 .
1 'M. IB" '••<$." 3f
.
,