THE wall-papers of a century ago did have distinct ideas and earnest meaning; a decided theme, perhaps 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 a lamp and, to her amazement, beheld themost handsome 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 represents the human soul, purified by passions and misfortunes 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 gazedUpon her lover, and with joy amazedDropped 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."
"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 gazedUpon her lover, and with joy amazedDropped 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."
"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 gazedUpon her lover, and with joy amazedDropped 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 LXVtoLXX.) This paper was described to me as illustrating the fifth book of Virgil'sÆneid. When the handsome photographs came, we tried to verify them. But a reading of the entireÆneidfailed to identify any of them, except that the one shown inPlate LXIXmight be intended to represent the Trojan women burning the ships of Æneas. Who were the two personages leaping from the cliff? Virgil did not mention them.
A paper inCountry Life in Americafor April, 1905, 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 theOdyssey. There again we were disappointed. Nobody jumps off cliffs in theOdyssey, Ulysses' boat is not burned, neither does Cupid, who appeared 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'sAdventures of Telemachus, 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-forgottenTelemachuswas found every scene depicted on the walls.
It is a strange commentary on the intellectual indolence 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 thescenes really were; for I have had "Telemachus paper" reported, from Kennebunk, Maine, and from the home of Mr. Henry DeWitt Freeland at Sutton, Massachusetts. The paper is evidently of French origin, and is mentioned as a Parisian novelty by one of Balzac's characters inThe 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 inscription reads, "Le 20 mars, 1800, 100,000 Francais commandu par le brave Kleber ont vancu 200,000 Turcs, dans le plaines de l'Heliopili."
Among the historical papers, we have "Mourning at the Tomb of Washington," and Lord Cornwallis presenting his sword to Washington. The former was a melancholy repetition of columns and arches, each framing a monument labelled "Sacred to Washington," surmounted by an urn and disconsolate eagle, and supported on either side by Liberty and Justice mourning. Crossed arms and flags 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 stairway imaginable.
Papers representing places with truthful details were numerous and popular, as "The Bay of Naples," "The Alhambra," "Gallipoli," "On the Bosporus." A striking 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 buildings in Paris are seen. On one side of the room you will notice the Column Vendôme, which shows that thepaper was made after 1806. The horses in the arch of theCarouselare 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; several 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 particularly rich in interesting old papers, and Salem, Massachusetts, 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 knowhow 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 expensive 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 Frenchsoldiers. 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 without 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 specimens 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, withthe 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 intreasures, 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 committed so many atrocities, in the way of stealing souvenirs, that visitors are looked upon with suspicion.
A house built in 1812 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 connected 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 immortalized in the same way.
The managers of a "Retreat" for the harmlessly insane were obliged first to veil with lace a figure paper,and finally to remove it from the walls, it was so exciting and annoying to the occupants of the room. This recalls the weird and distressing story by Elia W. Peattie,The Yellow Wall-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 tavern 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 members 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 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 bulrushes.
"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'll 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 Zuberfamily 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 for; 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 landscapes. 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 reproductions, as the one in the hall depicts the Paris Exposition of 1876, 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 flight of steps in front leading to a street that curves round until it meets the same scene again. Persons of many nations, in characteristic 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 reproduction. It looks like Holland, although there are nowindmills. 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 Historical Society. I was presented with a piece of 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 inhabitants are as probable as any described as existing on Mars.At Duxbury, Massachusetts, there are still two much-talked-of papers, in what is called the "Weston House"—now occupied by the Powder Point School. Mrs. Ezra Weston was a Bradford, and the story is that this paper was brought from Paris by her brother, Captain Gershom Bradford. There is a continuous scene around the room, apparently from the environs of Paris. Upstairs, a small room is papered with the remains of the "Pizarro" paper, which was formerly in the sitting-room opposite the parlor. This has tropical settings and shows the same characters in more or less distinct scenes about the wall. The paper was so strong that it was taken off the sitting-room in complete strips and is now on a small upper chamber.
A stranger, who had heard of my collection, sent a beautiful photograph with this glowing description:
"This wall-paper looks Oriental; it is gilt. Arabs are leading camels, while horses are prancing proudly with their masters in the saddle as the crescent moon is fast sinking to rest in a cloudless sky. Fountains are playing outside of the portal entrance to a building of Saracenic architecture, a quiet, restful scene, decidedly rich and impressive."
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, in hisStory of a Bad Boy, describes his grandfather's old home—the Nutter House at Rivermouth, he calls it, but he doubtless has in mind some house at Portsmouth, his birthplace.
"On each side of the hall are doors (whose knobs, it must be confessed, do not turn very easily), opening into large rooms wainscoted and rich in wood-carvings about the mantel-pieces and cornices. The walls are covered with pictured paper, representing landscapes andsea-views. In the parlor, for example, this enlivening group is repeated all over the room:—A group of English 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 comfort. 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 counting 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 thewindow. 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 earnings, 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 furniture and second-rate paintings. On the roof were minarets 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 of famous men. As his taste in great men changed he would have the attire and features of some statue modified, so that General Morgan might one day find himself posing as Bonaparte. On a Roman circle before the entrance stood his permanent hero, Washington, supported 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 thisPantheon, 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 wasA Pickle for the Knowing Ones, of which he published at least two editions. In this book he spoke his mind on all subjects; his biographer, 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 family difficulties." His vanity, literary style and orthography may be seen in his assertion: "Ime the first Lord in the Younited States of Amercary, now of Newburyport. It is the voice of the peopel and I cant Help it." To the second edition of hisPicklehe 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 character enough, and we are glad to have his memory kept green by these few remaining bits of paper from his walls.
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 intheoriginal colorings, it having been found that any 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-printing. 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 LondonTit-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 curiousway. 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 collected 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 mansion. 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 theArtistof 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 hangings. 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 Ile 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 Soveraigne 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, in place of the 'paynted clothes for the hangingsof 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 accompanying reproductions represent the oldest wall-papers now existing in England. They were found during the restoration 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 bed-room 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 toa 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 texture 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 fac-simile 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 ofRambles 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 business he was engaged. In the lower hall of the house arestill 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 developed; 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 perhaps 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 childhood, 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 fire-place."
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,has forbidden the removal of the Bay of Naples landscape from the walls of what was formerly the library of Professor Sanborn at Hanover, New Hampshire. The house is now used as a dormitory, but that paper is treated with decided reverence.
Reproduction of a fine 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 landscapes 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 different water scenes set deep into the mass of flowers, the scenes themselves of delicate tones and wonderful perspective. 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 NewEngland 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 onpage 77. PlatesXLVIIIto L give scenes from these papers.
The Cleasby house was regarded, in the olden times, as the great mansion in this locality. There was nothing finer 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 properly, 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 suggestion 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 wasby 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 openings 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 generally 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 & 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 machinery at the rate of nearly one per second; where embroideries 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'sham' does not expect the wall-paper machine to imitate.
"However, in spite of all these so-called achievements, 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.
"1. 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 occurring 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 injurybeing 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 15 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 interesting paragraph from a recent volume—Lewis F. Day'sOrnament and Its Application:
"Full and crowded pattern has its uses. The comparatively 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 designwith admirable effect. It became, in his hands, an admirable convention, in place of natural shading. The interest 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 animals, 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 ornamentation. 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 onThe 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 don't make some sacrifice in their favor, you will find your chambers have a sort of makeshift, lodging-house lookabout 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 erroneous impression that there is any widespread and absorbing 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, whenhewas 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 crystal 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 bed-room walls, andcover 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 amateurs, and beginners just infected with the microbe are searching for hidden treasures of china, silver and glass.
Why should the Old Time Wall-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.