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LIBRARIES
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The New\brk
Public Library
Astor. Lenox and Tilden Foundations
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The Branch Libraries
MID-MANHATTAN LIBRARY
Art Collection
455 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10016
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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
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
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
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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
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°
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.
-
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
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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
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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
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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}
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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
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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.
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