A "Vendue" or Country Auction in the Forties Quest of f fie Colonial Rjpberfand 61iz,eJ3eth Shackleion Illustrated wftti ma-ny photographs eoidwrth decorations by Heirry Fenn New York The Century Company t921 4 Copyright, 1907, by THE CENTURY Co. Copyright, 1906, by THE CURTIS PUBLISHING Co. 4_r Published October, iqffj CONTENTS CHAPTER PACK i MAKING A BEGINNING 3 ii FEELING OUR WAY 22 in THE FINDING OF OLD-TIME HOUSES .... 50 iv ALTERING THE HOUSE . . 67 v SOME EARLY ACQUISITIONS 81 vi THE COUNTRY AUCTION 100 vn ON RAMBLING DRIVING TRIPS 118 vin THE FIELD IN NEW YORK AND VICINITY . .141 ix THE FIELD IN PHILADELPHIA AND VICINITY . 167 x IN VIRGINIA AND DELAWARE 183 xi IN MASSACHUSETTS AND CONNECTICUT . . . 203 xii THE EASTERN SHORE 227 xin BUYING APPARENT WRECKS 252 xiv REPAIRING AND POLISHING AT HOME . . . .277 xv IN THE DINING-ROOM 298 xvi IN THE ROOM OF THE GREAT FIREPLACE . .315 xvii THE ROOM IN YELLOW 333 xvni THE OUTFITTING OF A GUEST ROOM . . . .354 506* CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE xix MAKESHIFTS 370 xx FAKES : How TO RECOGNIZE AND AVOID THEM, 380 xxi FINDS IN UNEXPECTED PLACES 399 xxn THE END OF IT ALL 414 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A " Vendue " or Country Auction in the Forties . . . Frontispiece I PAGE Candlesticks and Snuffers 5 Brass Andirons 16 Typical Legs and Feet of Important Styles . 26 Chippendale Chairs .29 Sheraton Chairs 33 Heppelwhite Chairs 38 Empire Chairs .....41 " The single street of the attenuated town " 53 " Facing out toward the ancient sign was a large, square-front, red- brick building, stately but desolate. ... In the middle front, beneath a charming beehive window, was a portico, stone- floored, with four white columns rising to its little roof " . . 60 Heavily Underbraced Chairs, known to be late Seventeenth Century 69 The Hall . . . . . .''". . !/*; .*.-; v <;/ . :* ... 84 Old Mahogany Mirrors 87 Eighteenth Century " Bonnet-top " Clocks 94 Fire-screen, Mirror, and Chippendale Arm-chairs, sold at a country auction 108 A Sheraton Desk, closed and open ; bought at a country auction for eight dollars 113 Charming old chairs of simple design, none of which is of mahogany . 124 "The sight of chairs upon a porch." Banister-back and Windsors, 131 Tea and Antiques 146 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE "That happy find a 'shabby-shop' !" 146 In the Village of the Furniture Census 155 Pennsylvania High-boy and Chest-on-chest 173 The Empire Sofa, with Winged-claw Feet, and carefully graduated Acanthus Carvings. It is eight feet long and has unusually graceful curves in the arms and back 180 Sheraton Sideboard, showing knife-boxes in place 189 Heppelwhite Furniture, from Virginia 197 Two Fine Chippendale Designs 206 Old New England Pieces, showing " Willow " Brasses and Carved " Rays of the Sun " 217 Empire Sideboards, with Pillars and Claw Feet 231 Old Mahogany Tables 242 Heppelwhite Low-boy and a Heppelwhite Fireside Chair Restored from Wreck 260 Windsor Chairs 267 Empire Book Case, Unrestored, of about 1810, with Rosette Brasses and Claw Feet, and Glass in Latticed Design 282 A chair made nearly a hundred years ago 288 Old banister-back, 150 years old 288 Slat-back armchair of about 1780 288 "A little Lowestoft, a little Wedgwood, a little silver-lustre, a little old Sevres " 301 The Dining-room ; with perfect example of round Sheraton dining- table, and the Bethlehem corner-cupboard 309 "That room of spacious coziness, to which distinction is given by the eight-foot fireplace " 320 A slant-top secretary of about 1 770. The claw-and-ball feet are short and heavy, as they should be on so heavy a piece of furniture, 327 viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE The Room in Yellow 342 A Chair owned by Anthony Wayne : a Chippendale of faultless pro- portions 346 An Open-work Brass Fender, Eighteenth Century ; found in South Carolina, thrown away, under a porch 346 The Heppelwhite Four-poster, draped and stripped, showing how the metal bed is used 357 " An old black-fronted Franklin, brass-banded and brass-knobbed," 363 A china cupboard, or "beaufait," built in the wainscoting . . . 367 The Aaron Burr room, showing old wall-paper at the right . . . 367 "When all was done, it looked like a simple fireplace " . . . . 374 Empire Console, bought in 1907, in New Jersey, for one dollar . 383 Low-boy of 1750, with Cabriole Legs and Original Brasses, from a cellar in Connecticut 383 Little Tables of Ancient Make 393 An eighteenth-century, brick-paved, wainscoted hall, showing a Windsor chair with a desk arm . 409 " Crosswise on the wagon was an ancient claw-foot sofa " ... 409 The Quest of the Colonial The Quest of the Colonial CHAPTER I MAKING A BEGINNING WITH ourselves, the kettle began it! Or was it the first pair of candlesticks ! Or the Shaker chair ! Rather, it would seem, on looking back upon the gradual inception of the plan, that it was the combined influence of the chair and the candlesticks and the kettle. The kettle, a charming ebony-handled thing, squat, round, of captivating curves, the body of it made in two parts but with such skill that the brazed edge almost defies detection and there is thus the air of Is! THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL having been hammered out of a single sheet, came ancestrally, having crossed the ocean many decades ago. The candlesticks caught the eye, one day, by a felicitous chance, on the window-ledge of a shop prosaically devoted to the buying and selling of scrap metal. They are nine and a quarter inches high and of excellent design. Indeed, after all these following years of quest and success, they stand honorably among our treasured acquisitions. Very dirty they were, those brasses, in that old-metal window, and the fragments of tallow dip candles were green in their sockets. They were indubitably old as well as graceful, and they were offered and purchased at the price of twenty cents apiece. To be sure, they needed burnishing, but that was but a small matter. The chair was an acquisition still more delightful in the course of its coming. For there was a Shaker settlement near the city where we used to live, and it was a pleasure to visit there, so hospitable were the kindly aged folk, and amid such an aroma of sweetness did they lead their celibate lives. We wondered at times, finding them so gently cordial to us, when we knew that the cold text of their religion taught them to be distrustful of people [4] Candlesticks and Sniffers i Brass candlesticks; Delaware. 2 Bought for ten cents; Sheffield plate. 3 Sheffield; classic pillar. 4 Sheffield; rococo. 5 Sheffield pair; concave panels. 6 Brass; old French. 7 The first acquisition ; from junk-shop window. 8 Bedroom candlestick. 9 Old snuffers. 10 From old warship. MAKING A BEGINNING of the outside world and to hold but necessary com- munication with them, whether they hoped to draw us in as proselytes for their community, so sorely in need of younger blood; but if they ever cherished the hope that we should find inward and spiritual grace among them they assuredly gave no outward and visible sign that such was their thought. They were hospitable, in a simple, old-fashioned way, and we were welcome to enter their doors, to walk through their halls, with polished floors, covered with long strips of rag carpeting, and with everywhere an odor of herbs and of sanctity; we were welcome at their meals of bread and butter, and fried chicken, and jelly of apple and sauce of pear, when, in silence, the men ate at a long table at one side of the great dining-room and the women, as silent, at the other. Back to back they sat, with the broad space between ; and one standing in the middle would have seen, on the one hand, a line of men's heads, bent over the ta- ble, a row of blue coats, with tails carefully parted on either side of the low-backed chairs, and, on the other side, a row of little muslin caps, and plain tippets and dresses of calico. These people, self set apart from the world, showed us the inside corners of their warm hearts; and it seems, looking back upon it, as if the taste for [7] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL the quaint and the old-fashioned, even then strong within us, was strengthened by knowing these folk, who seemed like veritable bits out of the past. They themselves realized that there was something in ac- cord between us, and one of the oldest of the Sisters gave us her own particular chair which had been made specially for her, in her youth, when she taught sewing to the children whom they then had in their school. It is a slender, narrow rocker, with slim, high back; impossible to rock, indeed, for the dear old lady had found it liable to tip over backward, or to threaten to tip, and so had had one of the Brothers saw off the rockers short and fasten on the stubby ends prohibitive bits of cork. The chair, charm- ingly proportioned, with low-set arms, has nothing about it that is elaborate; the code of Shakerism al- lows nothing of display; but it is most carefully made, is splint-bottomed, with a curious variety of Roman-key design, and the ends of the arms and the tops of the side pieces end in delicately ovaled knobs. The chair stands in a corner of our guest-room, holding in kindly remembrance the kindly folk, hun- dreds of miles from where we now are, by whom, long ago, we were made welcome guests. [8] MAKING A BEGINNING And so, from the possession of these grew the idea of outfitting our home with the charming and stately furniture of the past, with the mahogany and the walnut, the brass and the china, of the olden time. Even with this beginning, the idea was slowly adopted, with much of hesitating dubiety as to the possibility of it all. For, until we had well begun, the plan seemed so impractical, so impracticable ! This sense of the ultimate futility of the attempt, even after a few delightful acquisitions, was strong within us because of our living in a city of the Mid- dle West, where old-fashioned furniture is, necessa- rily, far less common than in the Eastern States, but even had we then lived in the East there would have been little encouragement shown us. To see the charming things of long ago is offered with generous freedom, alike in the superb collections of public or- ganizations and in the fine old Colonial mansions, in various States, given into the charge of patriotic so- cieties and filled by them with the furniture of the past. But the line between seeing and acquiring is clearly drawn. Those who show with opulent free- dom will only suggest, for purchasing, to go directly and prosaically to the shops where things with claim to age are sold. But it was no part of our scheme to obtain our [9] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL treasure prosaically or from sources open to any de- gree of doubt. From the very first we experienced, with the joy of having, the concomitant joy of get- ting. With our earliest acquisitions, the Shaker chair, the candlesticks and the kettle, there was the tang of some delightful association and the charm of the personal touch, and we were resolved, having de- lightfully begun, not to be content with methods and results less interesting. And hete, first, is the fact which, little appre- ciated, lies at the bottom of it all. There is, as yet, no essential scantiness of supply of the delightful and desirable old! There is just enough of scanti- ness to render the quest alluring. And it would be strange if there were any prohibi- tive scantiness. A century ago there were in exis- tence millions of pieces of furniture of the shapes that are now held in admiration. Things that are now the possessions of a few were then the common possession of all. In one single year, near the open- ing of the century just past, the shop of a single Connecticut maker turned out the movements for three thousand tall clocks. Other things were made in numbers proportionate tables, chairs, bureaus, andirons, candlesticks. So many were the mechan- ics engaged in the manufacture of furniture, that the [10] MAKING A BEGINNING trade came to be in some degree specialized, and there were men engaged in nothing but the construc- tion of Windsor chairs ! All of these millions of articles were not de- stroyed, all were not worn out and thrown away or turned over to museums. An enormous total is still in existence ; great numbers of pieces may be sought out and secured by the collector of to-day. Realizing this and how few realize it! it is but a matter of learning where to seek with the greatest prospect of finding. Although it is in the East that far the greatest number remain in existence, we found that in the Middle West there came many a fine specimen by ox-cart from Connecticut to the shores of Lake Erie ; many were flat-boated down the Ohio in the early days of settlement or trailed through Cumberland Gap by the pioneers of Kentucky; and, farther South, many a piece went westward from the Caro- linas, or, entering the Mississippi, remained at some point along the river's banks. Although the bulk of furniture remained in Boston, New York, Phila- delphia, in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, or elsewhere near the coast, the early folk of Cleve- land and Louisville and St. Louis, of Pittsburg, Cin- cinnati and New Orleans, were not without old THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL treasures. In what was deemed the backwoods there were houses of log or hewed timber in which family silver alternated with gourds, and in which fine mahogany stood on puncheon floors. And, in the West as in the East, during the period that the taste prevailed the taste which has so strongly re- vivedadditional furniture was made, on the grace- ful lines of the old, by local cabinet-makers. And outside of the known lines of travel and of settle- ment, many a piece of fine design has wandered er- ratically to some most unexpected spot and is wait- ing to be discovered and appropriated. Theoretically, there is no reason, except the pow- erful one that the old was all hand-made, why the furniture of to-day is not fully as beautiful as that of the past. But it is not, any more than the churches of to-day equal the ancient cathedrals. In such cases it is matter of fact, not of theory. The graceful lines and proportions, in furniture, are mainly of a bygone era, save in the cases of success- ful imitation. And, in addition to the actual grace, the actual beauty, there is the charm of association with an interesting past. The tender grace of a day that is dead lingers about the stately fireirons of the time of Washington or the beautiful chair which was used in a house of Revolutionary fame. The charm once felt, it never disappears. MAKING A BEGINNING There are so many directions in which one may profitably go, in the search of the old, that it must needs be matter for needful planning. By a judi- cious distribution of vacation trips many a point can be touched. By those of greater leisure there can be any degree of expeditionary meanderings. Often a business trip takes one to a place where a longed-for treasure may be secured. The quest will be likely to last over years. But it is such an enjoyable quest, in its experiences as well as in its rewards, that one does not wish it to be shorter. Old-time acquisitions can never be very greatly prized if, with a full pocketbook, a visit is made to a dealer and instructions given to outfit the house. It is the personal touch which comes from the personal finding, it is the definite associa- tion, it is the knowledge that one knows precisely what, in each case, one is getting, it is the personal adventure, and oftentimes the personal history, that give value, in addition to the value the find has in- trinsically. With patience and attention, with watchfulness and an ever-ready preparedness to take advantage when opportunity offers, the search for the furni- ture of our forefathers is as easy as it is full of de- light and of surprises. "> But, first, some misconceptions must be put away. [13] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL In America no one, no matter how wealthy, can fill his house with genuine pieces of the seventeenth cen- tury, for the museums and a few old families have almost every piece. Few, no matter how wealthy, can fill their houses with pieces of a period anterior to the Revolution. And it is because of these facts, which are well known, that the gathering of furni- ture of the olden time is looked upon as an insuper- able task. Fortunately, it was not until more than a quarter of a century after the close of the Revolution that the commonizing change in the making of furniture came. The triumph of the styles of Heppelwhite and of Sheraton came late in the eighteenth century. The triumphant beauty of the early Empire came, as the name denotes, early in the nineteenth. But, in spite of this, the term "Colonial" is at- tached to all of the furniture of the early times and the early shapes. It has come to be so generally em- ployed, and is a term in itself so suggestive and so sonorous, that it would be invidious indeed to strive to limit its use with chilly literalness. Nor must all of "Colonial furniture" needs be of mahogany. There is no such narrowing limitation. Mahogany is the most beautiful of all wood for this purpose, yet many of the finest old shapes are of [HI Brass Andirons i Found under a porch in South Carolina. 2 Rights and lefts; made for the inn fireplace in 1825 3 The oldest pair ; full of wasps when found. 4 The acorn-top andirons from blen- nerhassett Island. 5 From near the Connecticut line. 6 From an old house in Tallahassee. MAKING A BEGINNING walnut or hickory or cherry or oak or ash. The greater part of the finest old French furniture, too, was not of mahogany. With the furniture of the past there should go the brass and the iron, the silver and the pewter, of the corresponding time. Certain prints and silver and porcelain from the other side of the Atlantic, if they harmonize in design and period, are acquisitions. In short, in the gathering of "Colonial furniture," of furniture of the past, think of no restriction but that of unbeautiful shape, no limitation but that of unat- tractiveness. One thing after another should be so chosen as to be a lesson in good taste. And so, with these preliminary suggestions as to the limitations which broaden the possibilities of the quest, we shall return to the narrative of our own getting, as in no better way can we illustrate the methods and the potentialities. The love for the antique grows by what it feeds on. Deep within our hearts lay that love, ready for development and growth. And Fate was very complaisant in those early days of our gathering. It is likely enough that, had there then been numerous disappointments, our ar- dor would have been chilled. But, as encourage- ment at the commencement, and marking the ever- '[171 THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL existent possibility of finding prizes in unexpected places, we secured a distinguished pair of brass and- irons at a place where it would have been deemed absolutely impossible to get them. That impracticable place was Blennerhassett Is- land ! For almost every particle of the furnishings of that stately mansion which made the island fa- mous was lost in the fire and looting which followed the failure of Burr to carve for himself, out of the West, an empire that was to wax strong among the nations of the earth. Now but the barest vestiges of the foundations of the mansion are to be seen. And as for the furniture and the smaller belongings of the scholar and gentleman who cast in his fortune with the would-be Napoleon, the island was long ago swept clear of any trace of them. And yet, when we went there, we found a treasure out of the past ! And it was not something offered, by an island resident, as having belonged to Blen- nerhassett or as having been used by Burr. There had been a heavy flood in the Ohio ; one of those floods which come every dozen years or so, when the stream swells to mighty volume and over- flows vast stretches of land and sweeps away fences and houses and barns. In walking about the little island, with a man who [18] MAKING A BEGINNING had long lived there and who was well acquainted with the outlines of the great, semi-circular house, with the site of the old-time landing place, with the curious local history, he remarked that Blennerhas- sett had not chosen most wisely from the standpoint of one who wished to use the island for residence purposes only, because, rich as it is as farm land, and superbly located as it is in the midst of the bending stream, it becomes periodically untenable. Then, thus reminded, he went on to tell how, driven to the mainland by the last flood, he watched the water's steady rise during the day, and next morning, looking across at his submerged island from his West Virginia refuge, he saw that a dwelling- house had stranded there. In the course of the day he was able, with a companion, to row over to it. No one was within. But the furniture was in place, just as the fleeing family had left it; and the two men put into their boat this pair of acorn-top and- irons, which they lifted from the hearth, and a little round-topped hair trunk which was standing in a corner. Another morning came; but the river had risen afresh in the night, and had picked up the stranded house and carried it away. They opened the trunk, but there was nothing in it to give the slightest hint [19] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL as to where the house had floated from. It might have floated a hundred miles or more. A mystery it had come, and had but touched there for a few hours on its way to the oblivion into which it disap- peared. The man, although impressed by the strangeness of it all, clearly set no particular value on what he had found; his "plunder," as he called it. He showed the andirons, and we admired them. "Should n't you like to trade those for a ham- mock?' It was certainly a curious thing for two travelers to have, and, in truth, it was an odd chance that it happened to be in our possession at the psychic mo- ment. We had left it on the mainland while we rowed over to the island, and it had seen a summer's use. The unexpectedness of a hammock appealed to him. "Yes; if I like the looks of it," he said. He liked it, and the precious andirons became ours. Now, when one can go to the place where, a cen- tury ago, every vestige of movable interest vanished, and find the very floods work in his behalf to carry to his feet a pair of brass andirons, with a strange [20] MAKING A BEGINNING association of romantic Blennerhassett and a haunt- ing history full of possibilities for the andirons are of a design such as those which came across the mountains in the earliest days of Western settle- ment, and the house which held them came floating out of vagueness only to vanish into misty vague- ness again anything is possible. These andirons came shortly after the Shaker chair, and had strong influence in confirming us in the thought of realizing our dream of charming po- tentialities. Our Lares and Penates were to be of mahogany and brass ! [21] CHAPTER II FEELING OUR WAY VERY early in the quest of the old, one comes to realize that there is often an important difference between finding a prize and se- curing it. Many of those who possess old furniture have a high and just appreciation of it, and in such cases the right-minded collector does not wish to get it. But there are other owners, who neither prize a thing themselves nor permit it to pass into other hands. In the garret of one of the oldest houses of the Western Reserve we discovered an old grandfather's clock. It had been made in Connecticut; it had been carried to the shores of Lake Erie in those early days when the wilderness was still unbroken, when the pioneers took with them indispensable furniture, household supplies, clothing, shoes for every mem- [22] FEELING OUR WAY her of the family for years to come and for children still unborn. And here the clock was, after years of usefulness, lying flat on its face on the floor. It had lain there, said the owner, indifferently, for thirty years, waiting to be repaired. He would neither re- pair it nor set it up, nor would he let any clock-lover obtain it. And so, although there is somewhat of whimsical- ity in feeling annoyance because a man does as he pleases with his own, we none the less felt annoyed. It was not long after this experience that we ob- tained, from an old house on Long Island, the tall grandfather's clock which we still possess. And our difficulties with it have been full of amusing instruc- tion for us. The clock is of good shape and design, it is of good height, full seven feet and five inches, and the >p is of that charming "broken-arch" or "bonnet- >p" design which first made its appearance in the furniture of Queen Anne's time, and was not much ised before 1730. But this clock does not date back so far as that. ie dial-plate is of white enamel, and this alone, to begin with, would show that it was not made before the latter part of the Revolution. Before that the dials were of metal; of silver-plate or of brass. THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL There are other indications which fix the date at not long after 1790. There is neither date nor the name of the maker, but it is often surprising, in fixing the age of furni- ture, how much can be determined from the style and the ornamentation. The design, on the upper part of the dial-face of this clock, of an eagle, two American flags and two shields, shows that it was not made before the eagle became the national emblem. And this design is amusingly worthy of examina- tion as an example of bucolic heraldry. The shields are held out on the ends of two sticks, giving the pre- cise effect of spades. The flags are a trifle nonde- script in character. The colors of flags and spades are soft red and white and blue, softened still more by age. But the eagle is brown a golden eagle and with outstretched wings is perched, not on some classic pedestal, but on the ridge of a barn! The barn is tiny. It is scarcely half the size of the eagle itself. But it is none the less, unmistakably, a plain barn, such as the maker of the design must often have seen large birds perched upon. The entire effect, although it can scarcely be called artistic, is very pleasing, and proves at least an independence of thought on the part of the simple-hearted maker. EH] Typical Legs and Feet of Important Styles i A cabriole or bandy leg, with a web foot; Chippendale period. 2 A cabriole leg, with claw-and-ball foot ; Chippendale. 3 The tapering inlaid leg used by Heppelwhite. 4 The slender fluted or reeded leg typical of Sheraton. 5 The winged-claw foot typical of the Empire period. 6 The snake-foot, with its swelling spread at the end ; made after 1740 FEELING OUR WAY The tall cased-in clock stands with a dignity and simplicity of line that are very charming. And it cost but twelve dollars, which is very little for an old, brass-ornamented grandfather's clock. But it has wooden works ! And among the mis- takes which collectors just beginning are liable to make, the getting of a clock with wooden works is one. Not but that wooden works have some degree of special merit. They seem, indeed, to give an air of greater simplicity and age. But, although this effect is right enough as to simplicity, that of age is quite factitious. As a matter of fact, all of the old- est tall clocks have works of brass. The putting in of works of wood came through an enforced simplicity of life resulting from the Revolution. Economy of price was suited to the hard and barren years of the end of the century: Clocks of this kind are to be prized, as they rep- resent an unquestioned Americanism. Most of them were made in Connecticut, a place noted for the manufacture of other small, round, wooden things besides cog-wheels of clocks, and the one we have was doubtless carried thence across the Sound. But their disadvantage lies in liability to get out of order, and in the difficulty of getting them repaired. THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL One is tempted to wish for the reincarnation of that ancient clockmakers 5 guild, of nearly three hundred years ago, whose members were authorized to seek out and confiscate clocks, as the old charter naively had it, "with bad and deceitful works." Ask a mod- ern clockmaker to repair wooden works, and he will shake his head, with a smile. "No one can do that nowadays !" Our tall clock stopped running, after a house mov- ing, and nothing would coax it to go. It was ob- durate. No one could be found who could over- come its exasperating inertia. Once in a while we tried to fix it ourselves, and a kitchen table covered with wooden wheels that looked like pie-crust markers became a familiar sight. We vainly tried to decide upon the part that failed. We vainly made easy the way of the possi- ble transgressor with tallow or the prized panacea of graphite. Vainly we tickled the escapement with quill of oil. Long it stood, silent and lifeless, as if worn out with keeping time. But at length we heard of a queer mechanical genius who lived soli- tary, on a solitary farm, some miles away. No sooner heard of than we drove there with pen- dulum, weights and works. We found him living in the midst of a medley of mechanical contrivances. [28] Arm-chair of early and rare design Chair with jar-shaped splat and cabriole legs Early type, wooden seat 4 Back with simple, fine lines 5 Jar-shaped splat, with urn ; spade feet 6 A good, average example of Chippendale Chippendale Chairs FEELING OUR WAY His water was pumped, his cattle were fed, his wag- ons were hitched, his clothes were hung upon the line, his doors were opened, his shingles were made, his wood was sawed, by one or another of his queer devices. A vastly interesting character, he; and if the getting of wooden works in a clock could but as- sure the resultant finding of such a human treasure, then the getting of wooden works would be the thing advisable. To him the fixing of the wooden works was easy. He delighted in doing what no one else could do. And the old clock ticks in our hall, in solemn dig- nity, as becomes the representative of exigent, inex- orable, but gravely decorous Time. No one can gather a collection without, in the be- ginning, making mistakes. Now and then, as others do, we picked up the wrong thing, and, finding it out in the course of time, discarded it. It would be difficult to name any line of acquisition in which greater care is requisite. Not only is eternal vigi- lance the price of having genuine specimens but it must be a vigilance well informed. And even though the pieces in a collection be genuine, there must also be, to enjoy them to the full, some knowl- edge of styles and names and makes. There are no names in more common use, in de- [3-1] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL scribing styles of furniture, than those of Chippen- dale, Heppelwhite and Sheraton. To these might be added numerous others, the most important being Empire, Adam and Jacobean. Chippendale was a cabinet-maker of the middle of the eighteenth century. He published a book of designs of furniture, and his name has come to stand for the work of an entire school. There are few ar- ticles of furniture on this side of the Atlantic that were made in his own shop, but other workers copied him closely, as he intended them to do. More than four-score cabinet-makers of London are known to have subscribed for his book, and workers in Amer- ica also eagerly followed his style. He was a man of forcefulness and originality. He eschewed inlay and veneer and depended for his effects on proportion, strength and craftsmanship. The typical Chippendale chair, in particular, is al- ways recognizable. It has a certain bow-shaped top, and down the middle of the back runs a graceful per- forated splat. There is a wide variety of shape with Chippendale furniture. That he expected. With the design for a certain kind of a chair he would not only give dimen- sions, and rules for putting together, but he would show differences of possible detail, so that the cabi- [32] With typical space above the seat, below splat and cross-bar A back view, showing structure Sheraton Chairs Typical rectangular back Beautiful example. The three feathers are used because the Prince of Wales was Regent when this chair was made With graceful, perforated balusters. Cushion hides space above seat With wide space under cross- bar FEELING OUR WAY net-maker using his designs could present them all for the choice of the customer for whom the work was to be done. Different splats were shown, and often a single cut would present one leg straight and one leg cabriole, one-half of a chair with infoliated carving, or shell ornament, or fretwork design, and the other half without; so that one single cut might stand for a dozen different chairs, making thus va- riety in unity. To some extent Chippendale adapted from exis- tent shapes. And, oddly enough, not all the shapes known as his are to be found in his published book. He made no sideboards, as the term is nowadays understood. His sideboards were but side-tables. The sideboard with drawers came in later and may be either Sheraton or Heppel white or Empire; al- though it has come to be common, especially with dealers, to use the term "Chippendale sideboard" on account of the appeal of the name. After some years of vogue, the Chippendale style was displaced by others, but it has recently come into its own again. Heppelwhite was a London cabinet-maker who came into prominence about the time of our Revo- lution. His chairs were less strong than those~cTf Chippendale, because of the construction of the las] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL backs, which were always of the shape of heart or shield or oval, and most of them delicately beauti- ful. Fewer of these chairs are in existence, as they did not wear well. Sheraton, who rose to prominence a few years later in the century than Heppelwhite, never made chairs with backs like those of either of his prede- cessors. The distinguishing feature with his chairs is that the back, except for the uprights on either side, never comes to the main body of the chair; there is never a splat reaching to the seat; and al- ways there is a connecting piece, or cross-rail, run- ning horizontally from upright to upright, just above the level of the seat. His backs, in general effect, are square or rectangular. Many of the Chippendale chairs have straight legs and many have cabriole legs. Neither the Shera- ton nor the Heppelwhite is ever cabriole. Sheraton and Heppelwhite, although they dif- fered so radically as to their chair backs, were greatly alike in their methods, in spite of the fact that they rather scorned each other. Their tables, sofas and sideboards are often greatly similar, with an airy lightness of effect, and with straight legs ta- pering delicately downward. They never used the claw-and-ball, or that kind, known as web-foot, [36] Shield-shaped back Arm-chair with oval back and garland Heppelwhite Chairs Arm-chair with upholstered Shield-shaped back, no under- back . bracing Side chair with delicate oval A perfect type, with heart- back shaped back FEELING OUR WAY which may be described as a suggested claw. Chip- pendale used not only the plain foot, usually very solid and substantial, but often the web and the claw-and-ball. The typical Sheraton leg is round and delicately reeded, or fluted as it is sometimes called; the typical Heppel white leg is four-sided and never fluted; and in this lies the most apparent point of differentia- tion. Both these men used various fine woods in beau- tiful inlay-work and delicate marquetry. The Heppelwhite furniture averages a somewhat higher beauty than the Sheraton, and is particularly noteworthy in chests of drawers and sideboards, with curving fronts, swelling or serpentine, and in perfect little card-tables, delicately inlaid, made to stand, when not in use, half circularly against the wall. The name of Adam is less known, and this is largely because the Adams (there were two of them) made no furniture themselves, and did little besides mak- ing designs for special rooms. They flourished at the close of the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century, and, having closely studied classical and Continental styles, much of their work was distin- guished and beautiful. [39] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL Something should be known of the stately seven- teenth-century furniture, with its beauty of carving and painting, its cane-work and wainscoting. It is important to remember that in that century there was no mahogany in furniture, as that wood did not come into use until about the year 1700, and not commonly until about 1725. The famous furniture collections show notable seventeenth-century exam- ples; there are some fine ones in Independence Hall, there are some still in possession of private families, and the collector may hope at any time to secure one of the prizes. Furniture of the early half of that century is known as Jacobean. Empire is a famous classification in old furniture. It denominates the style that arose in France from the revolt that accompanied the revolution against the old order of things in art as in government. It attained its greatest vogue in the period of the First Empire, and was deeply influenced by study of the ancient classic forms, and still more by Napoleon's campaign in Egypt, which had appealed powerfully to the French imagination. Now it was that the winged claw came in; now came the sphinx, the lion and the griffin; now came a revival of the classical acanthus; and now came a wealth of pineapple tops and legs carved in twisted rope. There were splen- [40] Arm-chair with fine canework Simple chair, showing char- acteristic Empire curves Empire Chairs Side view of No. i, showing characteristic classic curves in legs and back Side chair with a harp back ; the front legs show a curve Arm-chair; curves of the back and arms show the period French chair, showing the " N " of Napoleon I FEELING OUR WAY dor and beauty in the Empire style, but soon its very opulence, its very enthusiasm, caused it to degener- ate into the monumental, the extravagant and even the grotesque. Its best years in France were from 1803 to 1807 showing the weakness of nomencla- ture, for Napoleon was not Emperor until after 1803, and the most splendid time of his Empire was after 1807. The style came to America in the opening of the century, and was adopted and followed with enthu- siasm, but at the same time with a saving restraint, although here, too, the style gradually degenerated. From the first, there was one important difference between the Empire furniture of France and the Empire of America. In France, ormolu was freely used, and over-decoration the sooner resulted. In the United States ormolu was little used. With us the same ornaments were used as by the French, but where the French made them of ormolu the Ameri- cans carved them out of the wood. The influence of ormolu, however, is seen in the brass-tipped feet of a considerable number of Empire pieces of Amer- ican make. The taste for sideboards with drawers having rap- idly extended in the quarter of a century following their introduction, there were many made in Empire (%*] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL style, and many are still obtainable. There were, too, some splendid Empire sofas. On this side of the Atlantic it is hard to find good Empire chairs. These are the principal great styles in regard to which the beginner should, from the first, have a clear idea. But he must also understand that not only is there wide variety within each style, but that there are many pieces of old furniture which so combine var- ied styles, or are so different from any precise style, as to make specific classification impossible. Often one can only say, "an old chest of drawers," "a five- slatted chair," "a slant-top secretary," "an eigh- teenth-century sofa," "a snake-foot tea-table." At least one hundred and forty cabinet-makers are known to have subscribed for the book of designs which, following the example of Chippendale, Sher- aton issued, and among these there were many who, instead of copying precisely, made variations to suit their individual fancies. There are, too, certain names of a different kind of derivation and of narrower application. Such, for example, is the Pembroke, the name ap- plied to long and narrow tables, square-sided, with ends either square or oval, and with drop-leaves at the sides so long as to reach almost to the floor. [44] FEELING OUR WAY These came from the name of the eighteenth-century Lady Pembroke who first ordered one made. The name of Windsor, applied to the style of chair which held wonderful popularity for a century, arose, so says the charming old tale (for every tale is charming that puts royalty in a cottage), from the fact that George the First saw a chair of this design in a humble cottage near Windsor, and was so im- pressed by it that he had a number made for his own use, thus giving the design an instant popularity. Never did any chair attain a wider vogue. King George chair though it was, Jefferson sat in one when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, and a greater George than the king of that name had a chair of this pattern in his bedroom at Mount Ver- non, and thirty on his piazza ! The terms Dutch, French, Spanish, when used in regard to furniture, are self-explanatory, and to some degree useful in establishing the origin of the forms ; but when one finds Spanish chairs commonly made by English workmen, Dutch pieces made in Scotland, French pieces made in Maryland, the practical utility of the terms diminishes. For cen- turies past, there has been a vast intercourse between various nations and continents, and chairs and ideas have alike been interchanged. T45] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL A century ago the winged claw came from Egypt. Long before that the claw-and-ball came from Hol- land. But Holland had found it in China! The claw-and-ball is one of the links uniting us to the haunted and mysterious past of the human race. For the ball, held in the clawed foot, is the egg which is of such supreme importance in the mythol- ogy of the world. What came to us from China, by way of Holland, owed its inception to the same deep-based belief that made the egg a part of the monster Serpent Mound of Ohio. Although the terms French, Dutch, Spanish, Ital- ian will, for the reason pointed out, only serve to embarrass the beginner, he will take a keen delight, later, in widening his horizon by learning consider- able in regard to them and in acquiring a know- ledge of the great French styles that preceded the Empire: the Louis Ouatorze, magnificent and im- posing as befitted the reign; Louis Quinze, rich and sumptuous but overdone, fancy run riot in wood; Louis Seize, delicate and charming, seeming to tell of the beauty and sparkle and wit of the ancien re- gime. The term Boulle is applied to work rich in tortoise-shell and inlay, with metal and thin brass, and is the name of the seventeenth-century cabinet- maker who perfected this kind of work. [46] FEELING OUR WAY And, after all these, the deluge of the machine- made! "What a fall was there, my countrymen!" The beginner, with a clear outline knowledge of styles and periods, and having familiarized himself with shapes from pictures such as here given, will be prepared to avoid pitfalls such as would entrap the uninformed. And he should, as opportunity offers, study the old collections, such as are displayed at Stenton in Philadelphia, at the Van Cortlandt man- sion in New York, at the Essex Institute in Salem, and Girard College, and the fine collection of chairs at the Museum of the Arts of Decoration in Cooper Union, and pieces of a century and more ago that re- main in historical buildings such as Independence Hall, Carpenters' Hall, Faneuil Hall, and the City Hall of New York. And then, prepared for the search of the old and the beautiful, he should set forth with the idea that it is possible to come upon a prize at the most unex- pected time or place. Emerson once asked Thoreau where he found so many Indian stones. "Every- where!" responded Thoreau, stooping as he spoke and picking up a beautiful spear-head. Thus it is with old furniture. The possibilities lie in myriad places. He that seeks is sure to find. Driving, one day, through a district that was new ['47] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL to us, we came to a lonely cross-roads, where stood a deserted house, dilapidated, ancient, shingled to the ground. The yard was overgrown with mighty weeds. But the real collector never ignores a dilap- idated and deserted old house. The floors were falling in, the roof was half gone, there was not an article of furniture in the rooms on the ground floor or the second floor, or in that place where furniture is so frequently found, the attic. But the stars in their courses fight for old furni- ture. In leaving, a sort of lean-to, off the kitchen, was looked into, and in that lean-to, with the roof partly fallen down over it, was a good-looking, old- fashioned corner-cupboard, which needed only slight repairs to put it into presentable condition. The house was a tenant house and the last tenant had moved away some years before, taking all his belong- ings with him. "Something there, did you say? It 's just a bit he did n't care to carry off, then." Which illustrates the point, so often tending to the good of the collector, that all the world does not have the same taste as himself. Many are the persons, rich and poor, who care nothing for grace- ful old furniture and the serene touch of age. It is fortunate that it is so, for if all the world wished for these things there would soon be none left to seek for. [48] FEELING OUR WAY "Old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine," were what Hardcastle loved. And many will add to these old furniture. For the old times and the old manners come dreamily back amid the fine old shapes of the past. No old book is so fas- cinating as when read from the depths of an ancient fireside settle. Nothing tastes so good as when served on old mahogany. And it is charming to see old friends seated in one's old chairs or circled about a splendid table of the past. f49] CHAPTER III THE FINDING OF OLD-TIME HOUSES HOW pleasurably the discovery of the "Old Stone House," as we always called it, comes back to us! We came across it shortly after having realized that we should like to live in an old-time house that would be in harmony with old-time furniture. The house stood upon a hillside, in the midst of a grove of old apple trees, and was but half an hour by railroad from the Western city which was at that time our home. We were passing, on the highroad; and the captivating site and the prepossessing pro- portions and an air such as appertains to the charm- ing stone cottages which one sees by the roadside in England or Scotland, irresistibly attracted us. We mounted the stone steps that led up from the road, so that we might see if the unoccupied aspect were but an accidental simulation. The house was as [50] THE FINDING OF OLD-TIME HOUSES empty as it looked, and so, that very afternoon, that very hour, we sought out the owner and learned up- on what terms it might be had. With the coming of the spring we were living there ! And in that living we tasted a new savor in life. An old house is not, indeed, an indispensable ad- junct for the lover of the old. Furniture of old de- sign has charm even in a modern house or in a city apartment. But it is a source of additional gratifi- cation to house one's ancient things in a building that is also associated with the past. That little house of stone which was our initial triumph residential, was such an individual house! Old it was, for that part of the country, dating back as it did to the early part of the century just past. What is old or ancient in the Middle West is not so ancient in New York, and what is ancient in New York is not ancient in England, and what is ancient in England would be deemed youthful in Rome. This house possessed the charm of personal touch and of personal achievement, although not in any sense of distinguished history. It had been built in spite of daunting obstacles, and about the building of it there was a pretty tale of marital devotion. It was of the sandstone of the neighborhood; THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL heavy-caved it was, and the front windows looked out over a river valley and those at either end into apple trees and up and down a sweeping hill and val- ley view. Half a dozen veritable ghost stories, too, had clustered about it. One ghost dug in the cellar for a pot of gold; another dragged a chain across the roof; and there were several more. We heard, one midnight (yes, literally at midnight!), the ghost delving with a mattock in the cellar; we heard the rattled chain; and we understood how it was that a deep-seated dread had gradually grown, and why there were some rooms in the house into which resi- dents of the vicinity would on no account enter. We had the fascinating experience of laying a few of the ghosts by determining the source of the sounds, and as to one closed room, without door or window, which had been closed in, by the original builder, under the long eaves, as a matter of con- venience, and about which a tale of ghostliness had grown, we settled the tradition by opening the room to household use and finding that squirrels had been holding ghost carnival there with nuts. It is pleasant to look back through the years, at that stone house on the hillside, with the apple trees all about it and the spring of water in the cellar. It [52] "The single street of the attenuated town.' THE FINDING OF OLD-TIME HOUSES is altered now, in itself and its surroundings, but we speak of it here, as it was the natural outcome of the gathering of old furniture, and points out a kind of possibility open to the collector who has love and faith. We smile, too, in retrospect, when we remember that we really had quite a reputation, then, as the possessors of Colonial furniture, in spite of what we now know to be the fact, that our pieces were at that time meagre and few. A spinning-wheel, for example, ought not really to stand for very much, even though charmingly made, and even though accompanied, as ours was, with a greater wheel for the making of yarn, for such pieces, even though of history, are not for use, nowadays, nor are they precisely ornamental, except in some corner of a large house, where they can with propriety and effectiveness be placed. Yet those wheels did much to give us a status ; and there were in addition the Blennerhassett andirons, an old chest of drawers, some china and candlesticks, the brass teakettle, and some other articles. Perhaps we had, in some quarters, a rather higher reputation then, as collectors, than we even now deserve; all of which but tends to amuse one as to the opinions of the world. [55] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL We began to realize that we could not remain there forever, that our gathering of furniture must be for some Castle in Spain, still to be acquired; and for a few years there was an interregnum of living in the larger cities of the East. But whether in a house in Philadelphia or an apartment in New York, the search for furniture was never forgotten. On the contrary, we were finding new and wider op- portunities and it was a period of interesting acqui- sition. The progress of our quest, and the pleasures which such a quest may give, were marked at this time by a dinner which it was now possible to furnish forth in Colonial form. The soup was served from a huge and aged blue tureen and each of our friends had an old blue bowl. A pewter platter, mighty in diameter, held a turkey which, in accordance with old-time formula, had been fed on beech nuts. A Virginia ham, a verita- ble Smithfield, boiled in cider and baked with cloves, was also enthroned in blue, and corn-pone and Maryland beaten biscuit added their effect. An an- cient tall tankard of pewter held cider, and a pewter mug was at the side of each plate. Each of the enor- mous dinner plates was old and blue. The salts were three-legged and of the past. The cups were [56] THE FINDING OF OLD-TIME HOUSES of varying degrees of interest. One had belonged to that Major Tallmadge whose prompt action in the Andre case, in defiance of the hesitating demur of his superior officer, was of such vital importance to the Republic, and it came to us through a lineal de- scendant. Another, from a friend in Concord, had been part of a set owned by that Major Butt rick at whose command was fired the shot heard round the world. One was from an old family of Tallahas- see, one came from England, another from Scotland. Six of the spoons were of the "rat-tail" variety; three, of Austrian make, had been given us by a friend whose family had brought them from that country many years ago, and the other three, a pre- cise match, were found in Venice, a city which was long held by Austria. The tablecloth was of linen spun and woven four generations back, and the liqueur glasses were all old ones, of varying shapes, picked up, each in a different city of the old world, as Tours, Padua, Basle, Milan. The table was an old Sheraton, of mahogany, and the room was lighted with candles; each candlestick having a his- tory or an association with some interesting locality. At length, while we were still city dwellers, we discovered the house which was to be a further re- alization of alluring possibilities. THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL Toward the close of a day in early spring we en- tered an old-time town, less than fifty miles from New York City. We were visiting friends, who lived in a house that stood before the Revolution, and after dinner we strolled down the single street of the attenuated town, a street shaded by beautiful trees and with close-by hills looking sleepily down upon it. And at the end of the village stood an ancient quadrupedal sign, placed high upon its pedestal of granite, in the midst of a tiny triangular green. And facing out toward the ancient sign was a large, square-front, red-brick building, stately but desolate, maple-shaded, and with a monster trumpet vine clinging to its front. At once it fascinated us. In the middle front, beneath a charming beehive window, was a portico, stone-floored, with four white columns rising to its little roof and with an iron railing bending down at either side of the generous stone steps and termina- ting at the bottom in clustered bars surmounted by a round brass knob at either side. Solid shutters shut in the windows; yet not for- biddingly only with a sort of austere reserve. And we peered into the hall through the narrow win- dows at either side of the door, and gained an im- pression of spaciousness and freedom. [58] THE FINDING OF OLD-TIME HOUSES The owner crossed the street from his house, see- ing that a neighbor with visitors was looking at the once-while inn. "Should you like to look through it?" he said. "Yes, indeed; we are interested in buildings with old fireplaces." The owner smiled. "There are sixteen of them, counting fireplaces and Franklins !" We entered through the heavy-paneled door. We walked through the spacious hall, eleven feet wide and thirty-seven feet long. We looked at the arching in the centre with its supports of fluted pilasters. It was a case of love at first sight. We opened room after room. We handled brass knobs. We fumbled latches. We counted the fireplaces. We mounted to the outlook, in the centre of the roof, and looked at the hills and the sweeping stretches of woods and pasture-land. We went down into the great cellars, ranging beneath the entire house. We stood behind the bar in the taproom. We peered into the mud-turtle roof of the old brick oven. We peered behind the fireboard of the largest of the fire- places. And before long we were able to make the building our home. A staidly restful village, this, out of our Ameri- can past. It was prosperous and busy, back in stage-coach days, but it* has shed the raspy burr of [61] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL business and only the sweet kernel of repose re- mains. The atmosphere of a serene and mellow past enfolds it, and the old-time inn shares to the full the charm of mellowness and serenity. This building was not constructed until after the Revolu- tion, but Washington himself often rode past where it stands and once he camped on the low-sweeping ridge over which the morning sun looks in at our front windows. The entire vicinity is rich in mem- ories of the brave and stately American officers and of their proud, peruked and periwigged allies of France. So much for the setting. And, for the house it- self, it is associated with many a famous man of the past, with Aaron Burr, and Martin Van Buren, and Horace Greeley, and Washington Irving, and Gou- verneur Morris, and many another of national or lo- cal fame. The stately old Georgian house was bare of fur- niture ; but its rooms were of the kind that seem half furnished even when empty, so perfect in proportion they are and of such dignified fineness of line. And in the rehabilitation, one could not but have the pleasurable feeling as of restoring to the building its own, of placing old furniture in rooms that had been made for it. [62] THE FINDING OF OLD-TIME HOUSES With a garden, and flowers, and an orchard of two-score trees, we could feel that we had delight- fully gone back to the land as well as gone back into the delicate atmosphere of the past. Exceptional, all this? No. Others have done similarly. Almost any one can do similarly if he so wishes. And, in regions where there is nothing of old-fashioned architecture, houses may be built like those of the past. A group of lovers of the old in one of the cities of the West recently bought a near- by village, every house in it, and all the land, and then remodeled the houses with great effectiveness after old designs and are allowing no new houses to be built except of the same general style. But in many a section no altering, no copying is needed. At almost any place within from twenty- five to fifty miles of New York, Boston, Philadel- phia or numerous other cities often at still nearer points you may be sure of finding an empty old- time house. If such a house be desired for use in summer only, or if nearness to. a city be not essential, the field is vastly wider. In the Berkshires, sought out though they are by thousands as a place of recreation, there are scores of deserted houses open to the storms of winter and the sun of summer. We counted over [63] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL thirty in a single day's drive in the Farmington valley. But it is the possibility of finding old-time houses within easy reach of great cities that is most unex- pected and captivating. Not that they give every indication of being ready for delightful occupancy. On the contrary, they are apt to give a first impression of being highly un- desirable wrecks ; as being, for one reason or another, impossible; and they are liable to be weather-beaten and in need of paint and their surroundings to be overgrown with weeds. It is with old houses as it is with old furniture : the eye of faith is necessary. Why, some time after our happy discovery of it, and before we knew that we should be able to live here ourselves, we told of it to two friends who had confided to us their longing to find some old place in the country not too far away from New York. They came here ; they looked the house over ; but they had not the eye of faith, and they decided that it would not do. "Why, the walls of the hall are blue and the woodwork is red!" they exclaimed in horror ! The charge was true enough. The evidence of eye- sight was incontrovertible. But how long should it have taken them to change the two offending colors'? [64] THE FINDING OF OLD-TIME HOUSES Those friends have been here, since and noted, with a puzzled surprise, that the hall is white and buff, as befits a Colonial hall and as this one was originally. It was with pleasurable zeal that we began to settle ourselves in the once-while inn, with its an- cient sign-post, so picturesquely placed, and its mon- ster lilac bushes. And an interesting coincidental touch is that Shakespeare uses the name, saying that "in the suburbs," at an inn of this very name, "it is best to lodge." One evening, recently, there was seated with us a fine old lady, whose memory ran far back into the past. She spoke of tales that were told when she was young, and of her own far-away girlhood here; she told of men and women of a time that is past and of how, at balls at this inn, guests came from many miles away to dance till dawn, and of nights upon which, men said, there was high play here and great sums lost or won. And then she told of how, in this very room, she had once sat close to Washington Irving, fine gentleman of the old school that he was, and of how he looked and acted and spoke. "Mr. Irving was not precisely what one would call a handsome man," said the old lady softly, "but one could not miss seeing that he was a distinguished [65] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL one." And she told with awe, too, of how he briefly referred to his late friend, Sir Walter Scott. And the old clock ticked in the hall, and the leap- ing fire glimmered in the score of reflections in the room, and outside, in the darkness, rows of reflec- tions of candles were shining, as if to light all of us back into the glamour and the mystery of the past. rrf r ^^T? T I r?7?= ^ [66]' IIIIUMIIIIIIMIIIIHI|lllllllirBM Him CHAPTER IV ALTERING THE HOUSE AD so, with the old white-porticoed maple- shaded house in our possession, it was to be a pleasant task to place properly within it the old furniture that we had, and then to look about for enough more to make the house complete. And the great halls and the lofty rooms, corniced with simple elaborateness, were a charming incentive. "Old houses mended, cost little less than new be- fore they're ended!" cried the cynical Colley Cib- ber; but assuredly that was very far from being the case in the rehabilitation of the once-while inn. For although the building, naturally enough, had some- what of a dilapidated appearance when we first saw it, it was firm and strong in essentials. The great, thick walls were good, and the roof was good, and the flooring was good, and the ceilings in every room [67] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL but one were good. With such excellent points in our favor we could afford to smile at Gibber's cyni- cism; although perhaps a complete restoration, out- side and in, including eaves and waxed floors and the addition of porcelain tubs and various conveni- ent sundries not absolutely essential, would make Gibber sager than he seems. The red and the azure-blue of the halls, from top to bottom of the house, a sort of acreage of space when we came to look at it, was among the things imperatively demanding attention. But a man, working for a couple of days, sandpapered away the offending colors, with only the accompaniment of clouds of dust, and then the white for the woodwork and the soft buff for the walls were quickly put in place; the walls being treated in tempera that is, the color being applied with size instead of oil. The old kitchen of the inn was a great room, twenty-six feet by sixteen, occupying the ground floor of an extension at the rear, opening from the end of the main hall. At the farther end of this room was a huge brick fireplace, whose structure ex- tended from ceiling to floor, the opening in the brick being of the capacious width of eight feet, a height of six feet, and a depth of three. At the side was the ancient oven, built into the depth of the chimney. [68] n en i ALTERING THE HOUSE There were wooden cupboards along two of the walls, there was a decrepit sink, and the fireplace it- self was bricked in at either end, besides holding in its middle an utterly dilapidated range. But in spite of the discouragements in aspect, the lines were there, and the fireplace was there, and the oak floor was there, and therefore the possibilities were there. And, first, it was a sin against opportunity to use such a room for a kitchen. Its shape, and the hos- pitably capacious fireplace, and the pleasant loca- tion at the end of the hall, and the pleasing view toward the hills, and the fact that this comfortable room had a lower ceiling than any of the principal rooms of the house, all combined to mark it out as a sitting-room, a working-room. He who would successfully adopt an old house must approach it with openness of mind and a readi- ness to metamorphose, and one of our first cares was to make this room what it was so closely fitted fon Nor was it a difficult task. Like most of the em- inently fit things to be done about a house, it was easily done. The wooden cupboards along the walls, snuffy and of no design, were removed, as was also the sink. A pickaxe cleared away, in an hour, the broken old THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL range and the brick at the fireplace ends. The hearth, of brick, was good and sound, and in front of this, before the oak flooring began, was a surface of brick, two feet wide, supported upon an arch in the cellar. The brick of this two-foot section had woefully sunk, and a workman who was to repair it sent word that he could not come. It was a case of immediate need; and again, like many another case, presented not nearly so formidable a difficulty as it at first sight appeared to do. For, after all, "another man may do what has by man been done !" So, in the even- ing, with the butcher knife the sunken brick were lifted out, disclosing the bed of sand on which all old hearths are laid. The gutter by the roadside was full of fine sand, and some fifteen bucketfuls raised the bed to its proper level. The bricks were then relaid, and sand and water were used to fill up the crevices as the amateur worker had seen them used in the laying of brick sidewalks when he was a boy; and in less than two hours what had threatened to be a formidable taskVas entirely completed. The walls of the old room had had many a coat of whitewash in the years that had gone. Scaly and yellow and blistered they were; but a man with a hoe soon peeled them down to the original surface. [72] ALTERING THE HOUSE Friendly discouragers told us that paper could never be made to stick on such a wall ; but there is a way to make it stick. The paperhanger first put on vinegar to kill the action of the lime, then glue; then, at the end of a day's work in another room, he took what paste he had left and a pound of glue, and brushed over the ceiling and walls with this stick- iest of mixtures. Then, indeed, the wallpaper stuck ! Low shelves for books were now placed against the walls, for the greater part of three sides of the room, and then all was ready for the furniture. "There was in the rear of the house," once wrote Hawthorne of another charming old building, "the most delightful little nook that ever afforded snug seclusion." And, somehow, we now had such a nook, except that it was not precisely what one would term little. But it was none the less snug, with its three windows, and the cavernous fireplace in which the flames would leap and roar. But, having metamorphosed the kitchen into a sit- ting-room, it was necessary to transform some other room into a kitchen. However, there was a room all ready to our hand the taproom ! For in an inn ' that is no longer to be an inn, nothing so lags super- fluous as the taproom. This one was conveniently [73] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL situated for the new service to which we destined it. It was a matter of putting the wooden bar down in the cellar, of altering bottle cupboards into dish cup- boards, of transposing some shelving into a side- table ; and the thing was done. In this room stood one of the ancient Franklins; open-front arrangements of iron with gracefully curving jambs, half stove and half fireplace, of a good deal of dignity in appearance, brass orna- mented and with bands of brass; the fire to burn on a flat open hearth, with the use of andirons; and such things were eminently fitting in a house of this sort because of their really having been the inception of the famous Colonial personage whose name still clings to them : the many-sided genius who, not con- tent with fetching fire from the sky, wanted to show people how to use fire in their own houses. This particular Franklin, however, had to be taken out, as it was not fitted for kitchen use. It was then a simple matter to have the wall bricked up where it had stood. Then a modern cooking range was set up (for the love of the old does not properly or advantageously carry with it a love for the defects of the old) ; and there was our kitchen, with a door into the broad hall directly across from the dining-room. ALTERING THE HOUSE The double parlors of the inn, one of which we made our dining-room, possessed fireplaces which had been bricked up. This bricking up of old fire- places is often done and looks formidably final, but it was the task of less than half an hour to have the brick torn out and ready for removal. Finely pro- portioned fireplaces were revealed; but alas! there were none of the treasures which we had fancied might be there. In many an old house there are the fine andirons, or cranes, or perhaps even a fender, of iron or the now precious brass, hidden away and for- gotten behind the boards or brick with which the fronts of ancient fireplaces are closed. In this en- tire inn, however, with its wealth of fireplaces, we found but one pair of andirons thus forgotten but it was a pleasure to find those ! Putting the rest of the house in a state of prepara- tion for furniture was now, in the main, a matter of no lengthy detail. A hole in the wall between the once-while kitchen and the dining-room, for convenience in serving, was no longer of use, and it was bricked in and papered. Every Franklin in the house was painted black. Here and there was a stovepipe hole through the ceiling, and every such mar was repaired. Wallpaper had to be chosen for the various rooms, [75] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL and this was a matter requiring time and care, to se- cure papers which should accentuate the old-fash- ioned period, harmonize with furniture and pictures, and be beautiful. In a general way, our choice fell upon greens and yellows, of which, in these days, it is possible to secure specially effective designs. Some of the doors were without their original brass knobs; and in those cases new knobs were put on new old knobs, that is, as we possessed a con- siderable number of old ones, picked up, from time to time, in anticipation of need, at junk shops or village carpenter shops, and even two pair that we found on a street stand in an out-of-the-way corner of Naples. It is well to cultivate the habit of gath- ering such things the small change of furniture, so to speak. The front door was without its original knob, and had an ugly one of white crockery. There was a similar one for the bell wire. Fortunately, in our possession was a pair, found long before in Penn- sylvania, of beautiful oval knobs, of brass, attract- ively grooved in rays, and these were used. The old knocker had long since disappeared, leav- ing upon the door only the marring marks of bolt- holes stuffed with putty. By sheer luck an ancient knocker, found in Quebec and long treasured, was [76] ALTERING THE HOUSE not only precisely the style of knocker for the door but its bolts so exactly fitted into the ancient holes that it was not necessary to damage the door in the slightest degree in putting it on. A number of old residents have said, "Why, I see you have found the original knocker!" In addition to the brass knocker and brass knobs thus placed beneath the white portico, there was a brass knob on either side of the steps at the foot of the rail. These last knobs, however, did not ap- pear to be of that metal; for so long a period that village memory ran not to the contrary they had passed as knobs of iron painted green; but a thor- ough polishing showed the brass. The banisters needed a few new spindles and the village carpenter, himself an aged relic of the past, was willing to replace them but was fluttered by the very thought. Weeks went by. But when, one day, a spindle to serve as a pattern was pried out of its place and carried to his shop and laid down be- fore him, all was at once simplified. "Why, of course!" And that afternoon he appeared at the inn with the new pieces made carefully out of a ma- hogany plank, and forthwith proceeded to put them in place. With the gate beside the house there was more [77] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL difficulty. A stone wall was there, and in the wall a gap with a pair of iron sockets which had once sup- ported the gate, which long before had gone gone none knew whitherward, perhaps on some old-time night of Hallowe'en. The old carpenter shook his head. "A long and expensive job! The hinges will have to be made specially to fit these sockets, to begin with!" He shook his head dolefully. "And I have n't any suit- able wood, either!" And, after another presenta- tion of the case on our part, "What do you want a gate for, anyway?" he asked whimsically. But, driving with a friend a few days afterward, a fallen fence and gate were spied. The owner, found, had no use for the gate. It looked as if it would fit the gap in the stone wall. And so we tri- umphantly carried it home, and it was not only found to be a perfect fit in width, but its hinges were precisely the kind of hinges needed for the sockets and of precisely the needful size. The gate needed to be turned upside down, to match the way of swinging, but that was easily done. The friend as- sisted, and gleefully helped to saw and nail. In a little while an ordinary picket gate had been trans- formed into one with diagonal crosspieces, to look the better in a stone wall, and the thing was done. [78] ALTERING THE HOUSE After a while it came to us that another problem was to be solved. The inn was a little too large. More than the two lower stories was not needed. But to lessen the roominess it was not necessary to tear anything down. A partition was placed across the hall, at the head of the upper flight of stairs, shut- ting off the entire third floor completely : a partition simply constructed by setting up packing frames which had been on screen doors shipped from the city. The frames fitted with almost no trouble at all. They were easily covered with a few hangings, giving them an air of completeness. And there was a far greater sense of coziness, and a house easier to keep warm; and at the same time, by a convenient arrangement of doors, we were still able to go into the third floor, through a door into the room at the head of the stairs and from that room into the next, and so around the screen, and thence, if desired, to the outlook. The original builder could not have made it more ready to our hand in this re- spect. None of the changes were difficult of achieve- ment, and they were made by simple methods and with no great outlay. And now, in regard to this inn which was our home and no longer an inn, we thought of those [79] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL words of good omen of old Doctor Johnson : "There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn." [80] CHAPTER V SOME EARLY ACQUISITIONS THE house altered into readiness, we prepared to furnish it. And it seemed that it would be an excellent thing to have each of the rooms furnished in a different style: one Heppel- white, one Empire, one Chippendale, one Sheraton, and so on; or at least that the prevailing furniture in each room should be of the same style. But that would be impossible for us to carry out with any- thing like completeness. It could be done only with free expenditure of money and time unless there should be exceptional opportunities. But it was well to have such a scheme in mind as an ideal, to be adopted as far as possible whenever opportunity could be made. In any case, no piece of furniture should be se- [81] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL cured not proper in design and age, except in those few cases of indispensable need where a less desira- ble piece should be used until precisely the right thing could be found; and then we should promptly get rid of the offending substitute. The floors were to be bare if they could not be correctly covered. Good hand-loom Oriental rugs of satisfactory vegetable dyes fit any date and go with any style of furniture; and this whether the rugs are . old or of modern make. But the color scheme must always be kept in mind. Fur rugs and skins go admirably with Colonial furniture. Braided rugs are a charming survival of a past industry, and, especially if they are made with thoughtfulness as to size and color, are very effective in many a place. Rag-carpet rugs are also good, if of a predominant color to go with the color tone of the room. It is not always realized how much, in general effectiveness, depends on the color. For braided rugs, or rag-car- pet rugs, there is always some weaver or braider to be found who will be delighted to have intelligent co-operation and who will carefully make just the kind of rug one wishes. At the sides of the hall, midway in its length, and opposite the side recess in which is the stairway, are four fluted pilasters, from which spring arches, in- [82] SOME EARLY ACQUISITIONS closing a square with groined and vaulted ceiling. From the centre of this vaulting we hung a chande- lier which deserves its name; for it is for candles only, of which it holds the Colonial number of thir- teen. It is painted buff, with black trimmings, and has oval reflectors and graceful sconces. It is of iron and tin, and is about three-quarters of a century old. Just inside the door is a mirror with a mahogany frame, three feet and a half by one and a half, straight- topped, and with slightly projecting cornice. It is of the general type of mirror of from eighty to a hundred and twenty-five years ago, and is itself about a century old. Until the sixteenth century, the woman who would hold up the mirror to Nature had to hold up one of metal, for glass mirrors did not come in until then, and they were introduced by the Venetians. In England glass mirrors were not made until a little more than two hundred years ago the ever-delight- ful Pepys tells of a looking-glass sent to the wife of Charles the Second by the Queen of France but, as glass mirrors were undoubtedly in use in America before the era of English manufacture, they must have been of Continental, and probably Italian, make. [85] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL Our mirror has the effective pineapple ornament, the emblem of hospitality, which makes it the more fitting for a piece of furniture beside the door. Be- low the pineapple, on either side, is the carved pillar, with twisted-rope design, ending at the bottom in a tassel. There is a narrow strip of wood across the upper part of the mirror, dividing the inclosed space into two parts. This division was introduced in early days from the impossibility of making single pieces of glass as large as was desired; it was long impossi- ble to make a piece wider or longer than four feet; but even after the art of glass-making was better understood the practice was continued from the be- lief that the crosspiece was necessary to a proper ap- pearance. It was from this reason that mirrors of the size and period of that in our hall are in two pieces. The mirror was discovered in a barn, and was en- tirely without glass. It was thickly marked by flies; thickly, as only a thing can be which has long hung in a screenless, not neat, kitchen of the coun- try. Probably the farm-hands had used it, for many years, as long as a broken piece of glass re- mained in the corner. Then, when that fragment disappeared, the mirror was thrown into the barn; [86] Old Mahogany Mirrors i Veneer and gilt ; and of a shape preceding Empire. 2 Carved mantel-mirror, late eighteenth century. 3 Empire ; with twisted rope pilasters ending in rosettes. 4 Empire ; with twisted rope, tassel, and pineapple. Bought for thirty-five cents SOME EARLY ACQUISITIONS saved from complete destruction by a dim idea of some time repairing it. It cost us, misused and shattered as it was, pre- cisely thirty-five cents! Being of beautiful mahogany, although the beauty was hidden by dirt, it was easily cleaned and polished. And this matter of misuse and discolor points out, what the collector early learns, that neither color nor previous condition of servitude prevents a piece from being desirable. There is a curious point about this frame, common to numerous other old frames, and typical of the time when artisans had personal pride in each piece of work. The topmost band of the cornice of the frame is not, like all the rest of the frame, of mahog- any. It is of rich-looking cherry. And the reason was long ago explained to us by an old cabinet- maker who had learned some of the secrets and ways of the past direct from old-time workers. Mahog- any, beautiful as it is, would, in the opinion of some, be too dark for effectiveness at the top of a frame. There, brilliant relief was sought for, to bring out the color and design and lines of all. And in consequence a moulding of cherry was often used as the surmounting piece. . [89] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL There being no glass in the mirror, it was neces- sary to remedy that defect, and two pieces of beveled glass were put in. Nor is this anachronistic, though many claim that beveling has no place in old-fash- ioned mirrors. It is curious how widespread is that idea. As a matter of fact, beveled glass was long ago made by the Venetians, and Venetian glass- makers were fetched to England, two hundred years ago, to teach this branch of the art, among others, to English workers. Our mirror has the small rosettes on the upper cor- ners, as was customary; but they are of wood, in- stead of, as some are, of brass. It does not have the drop-acorn ornaments, as do several old mirrors of the vicinity. Many mirrors of the period reaching from the late seventeen-eighties to the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century are known as Constitution mirrors, and are surmounted by the eagle, which sprang into popularity on becoming our national bird. Many of these are beautiful specimens and for that reason have been freely reproduced; so freely that the collector must be specially on his guard or else he will acquire a replica instead of^an original. This particular mirror that we are describing has [90] SOME EARLY ACQUISITIONS the square-lined top, without the eagle. There may have been, originally, in the upper section, some pic- ture instead of glass. Numerous mirrors of that time were made with rudely pictured rural scenes or battle pieces. Beneath the mirror stands a small, square, Hep- pel white table, with two drawers ; a table that looks well in that location, and is also exceedingly useful, for a small brass salver stands on top and the drawers are convenient for gloves and other articles. The question of pictures came next. They must harmonize with the hall and with the furniture of the olden time, and they must look well. More pictures were used in the past than is gen- erally supposed. Many an ancient house had tap- estry, many a house had pictured wallpaper ; but, on the other hand, paintings have been in high repute for centuries, and great numbers were made; the family portrait was an institution; and many prints and engravings and etchings were highly esteemed and commonly owned in the eighteenth century. Thomas Jefferson had, at Monticello, one hun- ^red and twenty pictures of one kind or another, some of them being copies of the great masters. Washington also possessed a large number of pic- tures, their total value being inventoried at a little [90 THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL over two thousand dollars. Other men of Colonial times had similarly large numbers of pictures, and many are therefore still to be found. Unless, however, one has sufficient wealth to buy the work of the great painters of the past, he may not care to have only such pictures as ornamented the walls of, say, the eighteenth century. But one may find good etchings, or other pictures, made at the present day, which represent subjects of the past, or he may find pictures whose date is immater- ial through being such as are of any time and all time. For this old hall we were fortunately able to sup- ply a series of prints representing scenes and cities of the Napoleonic wars, these being steel engravings made in the long ago, printed in colors, and acquired by bequest instead of quest, after long possession by older hands. Then, to complete, there are a few other old-time prints one of them of particular interest for this building, with its association with Washington Irv- ing, as it is of Aston Hall, the original of the hospit- able old English house which Irving describes under the name of Bracebridge. The Napoleonic series and the others being all of a size, all framed alike in black passe-partout, all [92] Metal face and phases of i The wooden-works clock Eighteenth Century " Bonnet-top " Clocks SOME EARLY ACQUISITIONS accurately spaced and all put at the same height, serve to accent the general effect of the hall, both as to design and age. On one side was placed the wooden-works, seven- day, grandfather's clock. There are some old grand- father's clocks that have chimes for the playing of airs, others that mark the tides, the phases of the moon, and not only the hours but the day and the month; so that a simple tall clock, without such things, is not the greatest prize possible. But it being unexceptionable so far as it goes, we deemed it best to secure it when we had the opportunity, for it does not prevent our some day getting a more elaborate one. Meanwhile, the sober ticking, as of a Time that marches instead of flies, is an agreeable sound. To awake in the night and hear it gives an "impression as if everything is going on as it ought. And it is pleasant, returning after an absence of a few days and opening the house, to hear it sonor- ously tick out a welcome. It is natural to think of the grandfather's clock as being of an older type than the clock which has nei- ther long pendulum nor long case. But that is a mistake. Grandfather's clocks did not come in till some time after this country began to be settled, and before they appeared there were in use here both [95] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL clocks with weights and clocks with spiral springs. The pendulum dates back only some two hundred and fifty years ; before that time a balance control was used. And not until after the day of long pen- dulums did the day of long clock-cases come, and then it came by evolution, because they were needed. At first the long pendulums were used on the old "wag-at-the-walls," as they were termed, and to protect the pendulums, which were frequently stopped or broken, the making of tall cases began. There were few grandfather's clocks before the be- ginning of the eighteenth century. With clocks which, like ours, have the weight cords running over narrow-grooved pulleys, there is likely to be difficulty in finding strong enough cord. The chains, used on many clocks, cannot be used on these. After our weights once came down with a great crashing in the middle of the night we set about finding the right cord, and did so, at length, in a fishing-tackle shop where there was line spe- cially made for the holding of tarpon or some other wild creature of the seas. The cost of the clock, twelve dollars, was very low, even for one so simple as this. For the elabor- ate ones, it is not to be wondered that high prices are often asked, when we consider some of the prices [96] SOME EARLY ACQUISITIONS of the past. None were low ; and an advertisement in a New York paper of 1816 tells of a tall clock with musical attachments which was to be had for thirteen hundred dollars! And a New York ad- vertisement of some fifteen years earlier arouses wondering interest, for it is of a clock, declared to have been the property of Louis the Sixteenth, which, although it had cost five thousand livres, could be purchased for five hundred dollars ! Was it genuine? one wonders. Or had some dealer even then acquired the reprehensible habit of mis- representation? And what became of it in the cen- tury that has since passed? A few chairs are all that the hall needs ; and one of them, simple though it is, is of a great deal of char- acter. It is of ash, without arms, is rush-bottomed, and has four slats across the back. The slats are carefully graduated in width for the sake of effect, the narrowest being at the bottom. The side-posts stand absolutely perpendicular, from top to bottom, with an odd primness of effect, but the four slats are on a light and swaying bend both upward and back- ward. This chair was made nearly a hundred years ago, in a little Pennsylvania town, and stood for forty years as the entry-chair in the hall of a Penn- sylvania lawyer. There are also chairs of this type [97] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL that are made with five slats instead of four, but they are much more rarely found. A chest stands near one end of the hall, a low chest of black leather studded with brass nails, iron handled and lined with old blue paper. It is a cen- tury old, was made at Galashiels in Scotland, and traveled to India and back in the possession of a British officer who served in the old wars there; afterward it came to America. In the early days, chests were of great importance as part of the furniture of a house, being used for the storage of linen and silver. One may still hope to find a fine chest of oak or dark walnut with some- what of ornamentation, or even a carved and painted old chest of English make. It would be unlikely, now, to find one of the corniced marquetry chests of the early Dutch, but even that need not be looked upon as altogether impossible. At the farther end of the long hall is the door opening into the room with the big fireplace, and upon this door is placed an ancient iron knocker, ac- quired through the chance of happening to pass by an old house in the heart of London, literally under the shadow of Westminster, as the old house was being demolished. The demolition had reached the first floor; in half an hour the door would have been [98] SOME EARLY ACQUISITIONS thrown down; but the offer of a shilling promptly se- cured the knocker, with bolts and all complete. It is seldom that one can find an article actually in place, in that sense; but it is always highly satis- factory to find old furniture in use in the house that has long held it; or, what is even better, for the pieces are likely to be better preserved, in the very house where they were long used, but in the garret. And one of the ways of securing things at the house for which they were originally bought or made is to attend a good country auction. [99] CHAPTER VI THE COUNTRY AUCTION THERE is fascination in the very thought of a country auction. Not, indeed, that there is always something to be picked up, but that there is an ever-present possibility. There is an al- lurement in the very sight of a country auction bill, whether it be tacked on the oak tree at the watering trough or hung on a string in the village store. Nor is this merely a modern idea. Those who like to know that in their quest of things of the past they are following in the footsteps of the notable people of a bygone time, will not only remember that auctions have long been held in high esteem (they are as old as the Romans), but that the very Father of His Country went one day to an auction at the breaking up of a neighbor's establishment in the Potomac region, and there purchased furniture to the value, as the queerly precise old record has it, [100] THE COUNTRY AUCTION of one hundred and sixty-nine pounds, twelve shil- lings and nine-pence! That Washington, although he bought from a full pocketbook and spent a lavish total, was not able to resist entirely the delight of getting things at as good a bargain as possible, and that he was reluctantly forced upward on different purchases, shilling by shilling and penny by penny, is amusingly apparent. How delightful would be a full and accurate account of his behavior and his bidding at that auction ! Nowadays, in many districts, when an auction impends, handbills are distributed to every little store and post-office within a radius of some ten miles or so, and tacked upon trees at cross-roads. Placed thus in public view, the bills are commented upon by the critical and combined intelligence of the neighborhood. The important announcements, from the local viewpoint, are of horses and cattle, of farming machiner^, of chickens and of hay. Yet almost al- ways, if looked for, may be found the words, tucked away somewhere down toward the bottom, "House- hold furniture." Sometimes the descriptive "old- fashioned" accompanies the words. Sometimes there is an item of "coverlids and homespun blan- kets." And "coverlids and homespun" are likely [ 101 ] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL to portend ancient chests of drawers and Windsor chairs. The auction will not be quite so promising as to results if the house is near a summer resort or any of the host of places to which urban dwellers crowd during the distinctly suburban months. And yet this does not make so much difference as it might, for most auctions are held in the spring or fall, before the tide has set from the city or after it has ebbed cityward again. Most promising, is the little auction where the number of articles is small, where comparatively few people will be attracted, and where, at the end of the little handbills, is modestly printed the announce- ment that articles sent in by neighbors will be dis- posed of at the same time. There is always the likelihood that such an an- nouncement will fetch to the light of an auction- eer's day the single pair of unused andirons from the garret of the aged spinster, the rare candlesticks which some old settler long since discarded and for- got, the four-post bed, the set of drawers, or some- thing else equally interesting, which inquiring search would not have revealed but which the owner is as glad to sell as you are to buy. It is astonishing how many old pieces are put away and forgotten and re- garded as of no value; and on the other hand, it is [102] THE COUNTRY AUCTION astonishing at how much beyond even the city prices some of the country dwellers value their old-time articles. To buy something old at a country auction or a country house, having behind it no dealer's guarantee of quality or condition, having the trouble and expense of getting it home, ought properly to carry with it the benefit of a lower price than for an article repaired and polished, put in perfect condi- tion, and delivered. On a beautiful October day we set forth to an auction at a house a dozen miles off, situated eight miles from a railroad and far from any town. We carried our luncheon, and oats for the horse, and were equipped for results. We had first inter- viewed our neighbors, and were told that the auc- tion was held because of the death of an aged woman, long occupant of an ancient house ; that her family had lived and died there for a hundred and twenty-five years; that there were only distant kin who felt no personal interest in either the house or the furniture ; and that the house was full of old- fashioned things. And so we went brightly on through the bright October day. The sun was cheerful and warm, and the air was a caress. We approached the house. It was venerable and wind-beaten and gray, standing high up toward the [103] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL top of a hill, with the old road sweeping by its door. Its ancient shingled sides told of multitude of an- tique treasures within. Wagons filled with coun- try folk were converging on the spot from all direc- tions. It was assuredly going to be a notable auction ! We reached the place, and the horse was tied to a fence along with a long line of other horses. In the front yard was a lot of kitchen material : wash-tubs, glass fruit jars, ironing boards, clothes-pins, pie-tins, frying pans, and a medley of similar things, little and big. There were men and women poking about. Other men and women, gathered in knots, were enjoying the reunion that comes with every auction for an auction in the country brings many people together for perhaps the only time in weeks or months. We were still elated. This exhibit of simple ar- ticles on the grass was to make it unnecessary for the auctioneer to lead the throng into the kitchen and cellar on his course through the house. We went to the door. A grim-visaged woman stood on guard. Glancing beyond her, one could see only a great bareness. "Every thing 's out there in the yard !" she snapped. "But the furniture?" [104] THE COUNTRY AUCTION "There ain't any." "But the bill said" "It 's all sold." And such was actually the case. Every thing ex- cept a few stray worthless pieces had been disposed of at private sale, or had been taken away by the relatives, who, we learned, had swooped down and seized everything worth taking, although they had not even seen the house or their aged relative for many years. Needless to say, we did not wait for the sale, al- though the auctioneer was clearing his voice and be- ginning to gather the people together. They were not all disappointed, of course. There are often ex- tremely desirable bargains to be had in the matter of glass jars and ironing boards and frying pans. And for ourselves well, it was a beautiful day for a drive, and it is illuminating and mildly chastening to learn thaV all expectations do not materialize and that every country auction is not a treasure field. But there was recently a sale which furnished pe- culiarly good examples of the possibilities that lurk within the country auction, and at the same time showed what wonderful prizes one may at any mo- ment secure. The house whose furniture was sold out was built before the Revolution, and the roll of THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL its guests included names famous in our history, such as Alexander Hamilton and General Montgom- ery and John Jay, and one whose entertainment was matter of condolence as well as respect, General Bur- goyne. It was peculiarly a house from which no collector could ever have hoped to secure a single article, any more than from a museum. Yet all the belongings were recently sold at auction ! And chief among the articles of interest, finer even than the set of two hundred pieces of old blue Can- ton china, was a set of Chippendale chairs, twelve in number. These twelve chairs, beautifully designed and made, and two of them with arms, were used at the time of General Burgoyne's reception there, an hon- ored prisoner, after his surrender at Saratoga and on his way toward the coast. And there is a curious point about them. Although distinctively Chippen- dale in design, and in the unmistakable central splat, they show a Dutch influence in that the top line of the back merges into the side lines without a break- giving the effect, that is, as if of a single piece, rounded and bent, instead of one piece at each side and one at the top. Chairs with this peculiarity are usually known as Dutch chairs, but in this case the Chippendale characteristics far outweigh the Dutch [106] THE COUNTRY AUCTION and the beauty of design has been but slightly less- ened. There was an auction sale of a different class, not at all a notable one, just a few months ago, only eight miles from our home, at which there were op- portunities such as one can ordinarily only dream of. Unfortunately we did not go, being informed by some who ought to have known better that there was nothing of much interest there. Particulars of the sale came later, from a friend ; and here, literally set down, are some of the prices at which sales were actually made, only fifty miles from New York. A fine and ancient armoire, of dark oak, heavy, dignified, impressive, went for six dollars. Good armchairs, the kind which Sheraton himself called "fancy" chairs, light and delicate, painted, and with touches of gil^ sold for thirty-five cents each. Some mahogany chairs, of late Empire, were bid off at ten cents apiece less. An admirable mahogany chest of drawers, with oval brasses, was knocked down for one dollar! A plain chest of drawers of cherry, with wooden knobs on the drawers, was bid in for twenty-five cents. Thus it is that the country auction tantalizes with its potentialities. One day we set off to an old house upon one of the [ 109 ] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL oldest roads of the countryside, a thoroughfare fa- miliar to the troops of the Revolution. But we found it a place where the penalty of too much prosperity had been paid. Generation after generation had thrown away the old and purchased new. There were but few things in the house for which a collector could care, and for those few the prices were run up by the dealers, and then, when they would go no higher, by a man who had come with apparently unlimited money and the intention of procuring a household furnishing of antiques. But the auction was an amusing one. The auc- tioneer, genial, loud-voiced, ready-witted, knew al- most everyone in a first-name intimacy. As he led the way from room to room, he interspersed the sell- ing with jests and pleasantries. One woman had recently married a second husband, and he was al- ways calling her, with intent to embarrass, by her earlier married name. It so happened that her buy- ings of the prosaically useful were many, and it gave the auctioneer the frequent opportunity to call out to his clerk to set the sale down to "Mrs. Brown." No matter how often he did this, she was each time genuinely taken off her guard, so deeply had the sec- ond marriage impressed her. And so, to his cue of "Mrs. Brown," she invariably gave her agitated con- [no] THE COUNTRY AUCTION tradiction, "No, no, no ! Mrs. Jenkins !" To the in- tense amusement of the crowd. In one room was a fine old bellows. A number examined it appreciatively. The man who had come prepared to bid for everything openly admired it. It was of graceful shape, rather large, heavily bossed upon one side and showing a generous wealth of brass nails on its margins, and it possessed an un- usually long and heavy and business-like brass nose. Naturally, it showed hard usage, and its leathers showed holes. None the less, it was a distinct po- tential prize, one of the very few possibilities. But the auctioneer, when he picked it up, saw only the holes in the leathers; and so, to make a "lot" with it, he held up at the same time a spittoon of mottled brown crockery, past its prime. "How much am I bid for {he lot?" he asked. There was a sudden chill. All at once it seemed that nobody wanted a fine bellows, in spittoon en- vironment. To the admirers of the bellows, includ- ing him of the plethoric purse, it seemed that they were asked to bid not on the bellows but upon its obnoxious associate. "Ten cents!" There was no other bid, and the bellows was ours. "No; I don't want the other;" and the auctioneer [in] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL smiled appreciatively and handed the spittoon, as a gift, to a patriarchal farm-laborer in the front row, who bore it off in toothless glee. It mattered not, now, that to the very rich had gone the very little of braided rug and acorn mirror and quaint old chair which the sale had afforded. Our bellows for ten cents! a bellows for which we had been prepared to bid high had redeemed the day. It mattered not that there were holes in the leathers. By chance, by the fate that watches over true lovers of the old, there was a piece of morocco at home of size sufficient to make new leathers for it, and it took but an hour to do the work. Considered simply as a money proposition, it would have been more economical to purchase a bel- lows in the regular way, instead of taking two per- sons and a horse, and an entire day, for a cross-coun- try drive and an auction sale. But as it is we have a particularly fine bellows, which reminds us of a fine old house of the olden time and of the varied amusing experiences of a pleasant day. At this same auction we missed an unusual oppor- tunity. A great lot of carpet was put up in one lot : ingrain, of good quality, and not much worn, but of such colors and designs as to displease everybody through their glaring gaudiness. The entire lot was [112] THE COUNTRY AUCTION knocked down for a trivial sum, we looking on indif- ferently. And not until afterward did it occur to us that the carpet should have been bought; not to use as a carpet, but to be cut into strips, and made, by the local weaver, into rugs ; for it could have been done in such a way as to lose all the gaudiness and make the rugs of softly warm colors and modestly attractive effect. All good auctions are not in the country. There are some city auction sales which it is a satisfaction, and perhaps a pleasure, to look in upon : auctions at those shops which make a specialty of handling the antique. For at such places there is always the pos- sibility of seeing just the piece you wish, and not a copy but a valuable original. Naturally, in the large cities theje are likely to be so many people present as to make low prices unusual for desirable articles. But the prices are often very fair. There are, too, sales in the city at the breaking up of homes; it may be because a family has died out, it may be from the same reason that caused the Sed- ley sale at which Becky Sharp was present and where the well-intentioned Dobbin purchased a piano, and where there were also disposed of certain magnificent mahogany tables. It has come to be rather the custom, however at THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL least in New York for the sale of the furnishings of an old city home to be held at one of the principal auction-rooms. For the sale of special collections in this manner, catalogues are printed, often illustrated ones, and the articles are on preliminary exhibition for several days. It is worth remembering that, at the large shops, the end of the day is likely to be the best. The auc- tioneer is tired, and begins to lessen his attempts to raise prices; and most of the people are restless and beginning, more or less actively, to think of home; many are actually leaving. Drop into the rooms just for those final psychic moments, and you may "learn something to your advantage," as advertise- ments have it. It was at such an hour in the late afternoon that six beautiful old blue dinner-plates were put up plates worth at least a dollar each, and at ordinary prices two or three dollars. There was no competi- tion, not a single opposing bid following the opening tentative one, and the plates came to us for ten cents apiece ; and this in a sale at a fashionable shop where the wealthy congregate. It was at such a time that a dark blue teapot came to us for eighty cents, for which a dealer, who had missed noticing that it was up, at once offered us five dollars. [116] THE COUNTRY AUCTION It is not always that purchases can be made for a little. The price that lies in antique buys, as Hood would have expressed it, has been the undoing of many a pocketbook. But it is interesting to know that such low prices are possible and that at no time need the buyer of moderate means go to a high ex- treme. One of the most charming of the Elian essays ex- patiates on the pleasure which accompanies the pur- chase that is a triumph. A purchase is but a pur- chase when there is a plethoric purse, declares Elia, and he lovingly turns over and over his immediate text is the gathering of some old china the thought of the keen pleasure that accompanies the purchase exultant. [117] CHAPTER VII ON RAMBLING DRIVING TRIPS DRIVING into Massachusetts, one day, just over the line from New York State, and de- scending a long hill into the depths of a nar- row valley, we came upon a fine old house, of sun- bleached white, set back from the road among old vines and bushes and with great maples shading the broad and generous doorway. A modest sign, "For Rent," was nailed upon the gatepost. The whole place had an air of repose and the charm of days gone by. Leaving the horse, we went in through the gate. What a paradise for a home! Many miles from a railroad; and what an air the place had! We walked up the path, with the grass hanging over it from the tangled lawn. There was an old portico with seats on either side. There was a knocker on the door. The door was shabby. The sidelights gave a glimpse of the [us] ON RAMBLING DRIVING TRIPS hall, with wallpaper in mottled marble blocks. An old clock stood at the bend of the stairs. Two green Windsor chairs were in the hall. The caretaker, an old farm-hand from a neighbor- ing field, came in at^the gate. He gave us the key and sat down on the doorstep to wait and smoke. We went through the house. There were old set- tles by the kitchen hearth. There were two four- poster beds. There were old splint-bottom chairs. There were candlesticks of pewter and brass, and iron fire-dogs. The whole house had a scattering of furniture, but was far from completely furnished. Yet there was enough for the suggestion of a fascinating home. We were completely carried away with our find of this old house, apparently forsaken by its owners and awaiting a new home-maker. We went back to the door. The old man rose up and after a moment of hesitation grinned. Just why he should grin was not apparent, but that it was from a sense of some subtle joke which he was enjoying was quite clear. "What place is this ?" "The old W place." "How long since it has been occupied^" "Nine years. And last spring, Mr. G , the present owner, fixed it up." THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL "Is any of the furniture to be sold, or is the house to be rented furnished?" But the man was a Yankee. "Do you want to rent or do you want to buy?" he asked. We were not Yankees, but he was answered with another question: "What is the rent?" "Six hundred dollars for the season !" he lined out slowly, as if he were relishingly rolling the money under his tongue. We were surprised, and said so, for we knew something of rents in neighborhoods far from a rail- way. "Yes. Six hundred dollars! That 's what he 's looking to get. You 're only nine miles from Lenox over that mountain, though it 5 s thirteen by road." He looked at us. "Do you want to rent it?" "No." We smiled. We knew that there was to be some explanation. "Well, I'm to give anybody that looks at it one of these." With that he shoved out, with a motion like that of breaking coal with a poker, a card; and the card was that of a well-known dealer in antiques on Fourth Avenue. It was all plain. It did not need the garrulous [120] ON RAMBLING DRIVING TRIPS explanation of how the dealer had leased the old house, bought what old things he could in the vicin- ity, and sent out others from his New York shop. The old caretaker walked down to the hitching- post with us. "You 're the fourth ones to look at it. Lenox don't seem to come over very fast. I helped put up those beds and balance that clock on that turning step of the stairs. It would n't hold the fourth corner of the clock, so I put a stick under it. Yes, the W s are all dead. The house has been for rent for seventy-two dollars a year for year after year, and now this New Yorker has it and puts in these old traps. Don't you want to buy any of them? The o&er folks took off chairs and candle- sticks. The price is pasted on 'em. Ninety dollars for that clock. It 's pine and won't go. Fifteen dollars apiece for those old green chairs ; the price is on 'em under the seat. A hundred dollars for the dining-table. No? You are the beatenest folks! You don't seem to care for these things. You came over the wrong mountain. The folks from over Lenox mountain just paid what the label said and went off tickled to death." There was certainly nothing the matter with the old farmhouse except the rent; nothing the matter with the articles the dealer had put in except that THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL he was asking more than New York prices on ac- count of their present environment. It was cer- tainly an amusing and unexpected way to sell an- tiques and enhance the rentable value of a house. It could not be called a trap, for the articles of furni- ture were all genuine. Driving trips need not always be distant from one's home. At times the most surprising discover- ies may be made but a short distance from where one lives. We were out, one day, driving about the country, and came to a road so steep that the buggy seemed in imminent danger of sliding down over the back of the horse. The happy nomenclature of the neigh- borhood, so it appeared, had given to this road the cognomen of the "Teakettle Spout," on such an abrupt and dipping line was it constructed. At the foot of the descent a little stream forced its way with clamorous perseverance over the rocks with which the bed was filled. And on the farther side, on a sort of shelf of land a little above the brook, stood an ancient gabled cottage with dentilled portico. A widow lived there, with her son and an ancient servant a servant such as these modern days can never develop! Old, old she was one could al- [1-22] = 8 JH "E- J *s *S . o 2 "o he ON RAMBLING DRIVING TRIPS most think her older than the house and with such an ancient unstayed gown, and with a perfect gem of a mulberry-colored melon bonnet of cotton print, shaped like a scoop, quilted with cottony puffs and lined ridges, and encompassing a gentle, faithful face. Sukey; that was her fitting name. And in that lonely house, in that steep valley, with such a servant, it seemed certain that there must be treasure. Falling into a talk of old times and old things, we were shown up the steep stairs into the attic. Well, there \ras not so very much, after all; but there were cupboards and chests, and a litter of jugs and baskets, badly broken and in sad repair. And there, against the farther wall, was an an- cient four-poster, piled high with blue feather-ticks. It was a slender Heppelwhite frame, without elabor- ate ornamentation, but well and capably built. Ornamentation, indeed, is more apt to be lacking on old four-posters than on any other class of furniture. The drapery, the curtains, were more depended upon for fine looks than was the framework. Even George Washington, when at home, slept in a bed of com- paratively plain frame. The poet's ideal of the builders who, in the elder days of art, wrought each minute and unseen part with greatest care, does not iml THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL hold as to bedmaking in the eighteenth century; nor, in fact, does it hold to any appreciable extent in the art work of centuries ago, human nature being al- ways pretty much the same and there never having been very much of strong determination to beautify what was to be hidden. With no difficulty, the four-poster was obtained, and it was arranged that the son was to drive it within a few days to our home. And so, one morning, there was the sound of a wagon stopping at our door, and looking out, w r e saw the son of the widow. But where was the four- poster ! It was not visible, and so the presumption was that the young man had come to say that, after all, they did not wish to dispose of it. But the bed was there ! At the house we had told the widow that we did not care for the four pieces, full of rope-holes through which, in old-time days, the rope was crossed and crisscrossed to make a strong foundation for the bedding and to hold the bedstead together. For although they appeared to be clean enough, it seemed obviously better not to use them. Without these rope-holed pieces the bed- stead, when taken down, was but a bundle of sticks the four posts and the slender bars of the canopy, and the graceful head-board. [126] ON RAMBLING DRIVING TRIPS The problem presented by a bed that was now without ends and sides was overcome by the use of an iron bedstead strictly hygienic and up-to-date old enough in association, too, if one must insist, for of Og, King of Bashan, we read that "his bedstead was a bedstead of iron." It exactly fitted the space between the upright posts. To the corners of this iron bedstead the posts were fastened. A valance was made to cover the iron frame. All that showed, therefore, was just what ought to show: the canopy and the posts and the head-board. The posts show not only above the valance, but clear to the floor, outside of it; for we remembered the admirable suggestion of Chippendale that it is a grievous fault to hide the legs of a bed, because there is then the appearance of posts supported upon cloth. In meeting strangers, on one's random rambles in the country, offense is often needlessly given, and an opportunity lost, by the blunt inquiry as to whe- ther things are for sale. Most people rightly resent this. They dislike having a stranger come to their door and, pointing to this or that article, ask, "How much?" Even though they may really wish to sell they resent the implication that they have the ap- pearance of being so poor as to desire to dispose of anything, or the alternative implication that they 1*7] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL do not themselves have sufficient taste to care for what others deem beautiful. But the danger of giving offense, of hurting the feelings of the sensitive, of making one's self disa- greeable, and of thereby losing the chance of an ac- quisition, is entirely avoided by an inquiry as to whether the owner of the thing you want knows of any one in the neighborhood who possesses similar articles and would be willing to sell. It is really astonishing what a difference the use of this formula makes. Many a person who would coldly draw away from a direct question is quite ready to sell when he thinks your inquiry is directed toward his neighbor ! Few things are more exasperating for the collec- tor wandering away from the beaten track, driving off into one country district or another, than to come upon fine old articles ruined deliberately; not worn out, but so smashed or altered as to be useless. The memory of a splendid grandfather's clock lying in hopeless fragments upon a woodpile, comes strongly; so does the memory of two sofas one, so ingeniously mangled, Procrustes-like, to fit into a recess too small for it, that it was irreparable, and the other, a fine Empire, with its back sawed off to make it into a nondescript bench with ends; the ON RAMBLING DRIVING TRIPS sawed-off pieces having then been burned up, mak- ing restoration impossible. On the other hand, eyes are often gladdened, as one drives along some out-of-the-way road, by the sight of charming Windsors upon a porch, or quaint old settles, or even, what we once saw on the veran- dah of a delightful little low-browed house, a black banister-back chair made nearly two hundred years ago. There is keen pleasure in seeing these, without the disturbing desire to possess them. Driving one day through one of the oldest neigh- borhoods of the Western Reserve, we stopped at a venerable house, white and narrow eaved. And in the garret was a curious sight. There were lines oil lines of ancient coats and gowns, the old clothes of the family's ancestors, preserved partly, no doubt, from a feeling of pride, partly, no doubt, from some vaguely transmitted instinct of thrift. There the old clothes hung, ghostly, limp, strange, swaying slightly as the door opened upon them, as if startled out of mysterious reveries. In the same garret stood, primly, some enormous old-fashioned bandboxes, covered with gay-flowered paper. And there, too, we came across a silver toddy ladle, with long and flexible handle of whale- bone; and in the bottom of the bowl of the ladle was [ 1 29 ] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL welded a shilling of George the Third; as, within three such ladles which we once saw in a house near Oxford, were welded silver coins of the time of Anne. After learning not to be too quick to consider a piece of furniture older than it is, it is important not to go to the other extreme of being too quick to con- sider it new. At any time, and especially upon driv- ing rambles into comparatively unfrequented re- gions, the very old may be happened upon. Stopping, not far from one of the battlefields of the South, at a great old house from whose size and appearance we should have expected much, but where we knew it was unlikely that the exigencies of war had left a single thing of the past, we found bare- ness and comfortlessness, but hospitality. We found a genial man, the sole occupant, who, it being a cold day and the fire being unresponsive, poured oil upon the troubled flame directly from a large can, with the nonchalant remark: "It 's all right; it 7 s Georgia State test!" And in this house, in spite of its bare- ness, we found an enormous armoire, huge in size, with ball feet; it was at least a century and a half old, and stood against the bare wall, defiant, lonely, striking, though not really beautiful. The unexpected may at any time be met with. [130] " The sight of chairs upon a porch." Banister-back and Windsors ON RAMBLING DRIVING TRIPS At a house, almost a cabin, near a village which gave its name to one of the great battles, we found the owner and occupant to be the descendant of one of the old families, ruined by the Civil War and its havoc. His father had lived in a great house which had been destroyed; but servants had saved, and he now proudly took out and displayed, old commis- sions and letters and seals of Colonial and Revolu- tionary days, and, at the last, the uniform of a colo- nel in the Mexican War, with sword and soft red sash. It was in a blealTand scantily-settled hill country, some fifty miles from the town, Gallipolis, where unhappy exiles from France, refugees from the French Revolution, vainly tried to hew homes out of the Ohio wilderness, that we came upon a sunny farmhouse, a veritable bit out of New England, the home of one of the early settlers, where, in a cup- board off the dining-room, there were forty pieces of lavender "sprigged" china, the cups and sugar-bowl and plates being of octagonal form; and in this house there were old prints, framed in narrow black as they would be framed to-day, of battles and he- roes of the War of 1812. And in Kentucky, driving along the fine limestone pikes near the Ohio, where, in a dry season, the white THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL dust rises in clouds and settles like snow upon the shrubs and grass, where there are mighty oaks and lines of silver poplars, where houses, old and new, look out toward the magnificent river and where the friendly people cordially give a welcome, there are numerous things of value. One is first attracted by the tall ten-rail fences which give such an impression of the jumping powers of Kentucky colts, but one is more attracted by the recurrent old-time houses of squared timbers and by the things of the olden time still to be found. In some of the better houses there are fine treasures, but even in many a simpler house there are articles of what may be termed the splint-bottom school of antiques; iron fire-dogs, simple chairs, old waffle- irons, long-handled, not for the purpose of supping with a certain distinguished one of evil reputation but for holding the irons over the blazing coals in deep fireplaces. If one only realizes it, it is sometimes as easy to go from one place to another, within reasonable limits, on a vacation outing, as to remain fixed at one point. It was on a brief summer driving trip that we went through the French Creek region of the northwestern part of Pennsylvania; that region in which Wash- ington first won reputation, early in the 1750*5, as [134] ON RAMBLING DRIVING TRIPS envoy from the Governor of Virginia to the com- mandant of a French fort but a few miles from Lake Erie. We stayed over night at a somewhat old-fash- ioned hotel in a little town; and the room in which Lafayette had slept, on the occasion of his triumphal progress through the United States when an old man, was shown us, and the ball-room where he had danced. It was doubtless a mistake of the stone- mason that made the date upon the building, cut in the stone upon the^ront, a year later than that of Lafayette's visit! However, the house had a good deal of dignity of its own; and it also had a really good specimen of Empire sideboard, very large, with pillars and claw feet, that stood out of sight in a passageway between dining-room and kitchen. The proprietor was pleased that it was looked upon as of any interest. Frankly, he did not greatly value it. "I am using it, you see," he said; "but if you care to have a carpenter build a set of shelves, with doors, in there for me, to put my dishes in, you may take the sideboard away." Well, there were reasons why it was inconvenient to remain there and superintend the necessary work; and generous though the hotelkeeper's offer was, its [ 135 ] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL acceptance would have made the obtaining of the sideboard an expensive matter, after all as all who have had doors and shelving built to order will understand but the incident shows anew how on every hand lie possibilities. But one does not always meet with moderate esti- mates of value, even in little-visited neighborhoods. "Be you looking for blue plates'?" was the in- quiry once addressed to us by a woman in the front door of an isolated house. She had a few rather good ones; plates worth fifty cents apiece in the shops, in current money with the merchant. But she had been influenced, isolated though she was, by the unwise talk of some one who, not from love of the old or from consideration for the owner, but from uninformed enthusiasm, had set prices out of all reason upon her pieces. "Be you looking for blue plates'?" We looked at them; but found that the owner firmly, almost ag- gressively, was holding them at five dollars a plate. And we once came across a farmhouse where a woman, after showing a fairly good pattern of old- fashioned coverlet, remarked that if any one should ever want to buy it she would "let it go" for fifty dollars. It was we, not she, who let it go. No matter how far one may travel in excursions [136] ON RAMBLING DRIVING TRIPS into the country, it is difficult to find a district where the professional dealer has not been. The trail of the dealer is over almost all. He finds his profit in the lonely farmhouse. Nowhere else can he obtain the real things so cheaply. And even if dishonest in the matter of being willing to sell imitations, he none the less finds his profit here, for he can pick up fine old pieces for far less than he could have them manufactured. Yet the dealer, with all his persistent cleverness and his experience, misses many a treasure. He is often unable to impress the people that they should sell to him. Family pride is apt to assert itself, even though there may be no real desire to retain the desired piece. To sell to a lover of the old, to one who really admires the things for their own sake, has in it no sting. But to sell for mere money, and very little at that, is another matter. But, on the other hand, there are many folk who have no dislike of selling to dealers; who, indeed, are more ready to sell more cheaply to them; for, so it appears, the dealer must be at the expense of hand- ling and repairing before he can sell again ! A sort of topsyturvydom of logic, but none the less fre- quently met with. These itinerant dealers, who do so much to make [137] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL hard the way of the amateur collector by seizing upon things before his appearance, are of two kinds : the junk dealers, who frankly buy as scrap and who are fatal to many a candlestick and many a pair of andirons, and* the furniture men who buy as furni- ture, and who are fatal, from the collector's view- point, to many a rare old specimen. Sometimes a quite obvious opportunity to ac- quire a good bit remains curiously open, in spite of the indefatigable collectors and dealers. In an empty, deserted, ruined house, and put away behind a door, in a cellar, and forgotten, we once came upon a pair of good iron hand-wrought andirons. There was some reason why, that day, it was not convenient to carry the big pieces of iron with us, and so we drove regretfully on without them. But, a year later, we were driving once more down the charming road, a river on one side and a rocky hill on the other, and once more we came to the old, deserted house, which was just a little more ruinous, just a little more falling to pieces, than it had been when we first discovered it. Naturally, the thought of the andirons once more came. And so, into the empty house (the door had long since disappeared), across the quavering floor, [138] ON RAMBLING DRIVING TRIPS down the trembling stair and there, tucked away, just as they had been found and left twelve months before, were the andirons! The owner, in a house not far away, was found, and gladly took a silver quarter in exchange for the rusty fire-dogs whose existence had been so com- pletely forgotten. Always one is upon the verge of the unanticipa- ted, the unlooked-for; except, indeed, that the unex- pected happens so often to the enthusiast as thereby to lose much of its unexpectedness. We were driving along a road of alluring beauty, between Tyringham and Great Barrington, amid the tender glory of the sweeping hills, and we stopped at an empty cottage whose door stood invitingly open. This cottage had been examined but a short time be- fore, so we learned, by former President Cleveland, with the view of possibly making it the summer home for himself and his family, so commanding was its location on the hillside with a superb view stretching away for miles. Meadow grass swept up to the very door, and right at the entrance was a flowing spring. Some of the rooms were unplastered, some had stone fire- places, and all were empty of furniture. From the side door the path led between lilac [139] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL bushes and tansy to a little barn and a littler tool- shed. The barn, like the house, was entirely empty, and so was the shed. Against the wall of the shed was a cupboard made for holding glue and nails and workshop odds and ends. The cupboard was bare but its door instantly attracted attention. It was a complete mirror frame! with sides and top and bottom complete, and even the wooden stripping of the back. [140] CHAPTER VIII THE FIELD IN NEW YORK AND VICINITY NEW YORK, trie exponent of the present, the representative of the modern, the strenuous city of the twentieth century, in which no crime is so serious as being of the past, would scarcely be looked upon as a place for the collector of the an- tique. Yet in New York City there is much that is old, and in its near vicinity there is even more. There are, too, in New York, as residents or tran- sients, more people seeking for the old than seek for it in any other of our cities, and therefore the de- mand is met with a supply, even if the supply is far from being in every case all that it might be. So eager is the desire to tear down old-time build- ings, that it is difficult to imagine things of the past in the spick-span structures that have arisen in their place; and it was a keen pleasure to find unexpec- [HI] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL tedly in one of the newest of apartment houses, a really astonishing collection, brought to New York by the descendants of an old family coming here from the South, and consisting of portraits, old let- ters from presidents and generals, jewels of the wife of an officer of Washington, old mahogany, even a painting by that remarkable artist, of almost a cen- tury ago, Chester Harding, who, from being a painter of houses became a maker of portraits and in the very beginning of his career went to Paris but it was Paris in Kentucky! for his artistic experience, and then painted the great folk of the earth. There is a splendid collection of antique furniture in the Van Cortlandt mansion house, in charge of one of the patriotic societies; and it points the possibili- ties of what may be in this great city, that the finest sofa there was donated by a sergeant of the New York police force. One comes to know of many a beautiful piece in private ownership and to divine that there must be in all a vast number; and, wherever things are, the collector who has faith and experience knows that possibilities of securing them must from time to time arise. Of course, there are great shops where an- tiques, or alleged antiques, are sold, but, for our- [142] NEW YORK AND VICINITY selves, we came to prefer the pleasure of dropping in upon a curious old Austrian, who keeps a little shop in rather a shabby part of the city. A man of curi- ous personal history he; twenty-one years he served in the Austrian army, and fourteen of those years was stationed as a soldier in Venice. He and his four brothers were in the crushing defeat of Solfer- ino ; and, of the five, only he escaped with life. His shop, as one would expect, is like a shop in a quiet street of a foreigiytown. He always has about the same row of dusty pewter mugs and jugs, the same stand of arms, the same group of fire-irons and brasses and samovars, the same dusty old bronze lamps and hot-water dishes; but somewhere in that shop is always a bit of treasure. Perhaps it is a hel- met coal-scuttle, perhaps a silver candlestick, perhaps a pewter tankard, a brass fender, a tall clock, a Shef- field tray, an old mirror frame. His is not the smart shop of big prices. His is that happy find a "shabby shop" ! His prices have gone up somewhat with the pass- ing of the years. He will tell you that things are harder to get than they used to be before the growth of interest in antiques, and that now "when I go to an auction on Long Island I can hardly get through the crowd of carriages at the door." Naturally [M3] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL enough, the helmet coal-scuttle, in brass, for two dol- lars, is now but a memory of six years ago; now, at eight dollars each, they stay with him but a day. But there are other things on which prices have not pro- portionately changed. To the favored few he gives the key to his cabinet of small and precious things ; gives it and turns away to leave one in peace to look over the seals and mini- atures and ivory-bound prayer-books and tortoise- shell snuff-boxes of generations ago. It is a fetching process, this exploration ; it seldom fails of the result- ant "How much*?" and then there will be two or three things set together and the old Austrian will teeter up and down on his toes and say, "So much for the lot!" A type, this, of an interesting class of dealer that is supposed never to have existed in this country or else to have passed away ; and yet he and such as he, although in limited number, may be unearthed. In the neighborhood of New York there are many small towns where treasures of old furniture can still be found. What used to be the most promising of these towns is on Long Island, within pleasant trol- leying distance of the city, and a shop there should be described, on account of its being typical of a class. [144] Tea and Antiques That happy find a ' shabby-shop ' NEW YORK AND VICINITY An old man, himself a lover of the antique, bought and stored a prodigious number of old tables and chairs, bureaus and desks, andirons and fenders and candlesticks. His was distinctly one of the "shabby shops," to use again a term beloved of the collector. No cabinet-maker's strategy improved his pieces, no smell of linseed oil or shellac marked efforts to brighten their dinginess. There were the dust and the smell and the breakages that go with so many of the things of long ago. The owner of this great collection spent his time in looking for more. Although his stock filled an old-fashioned country store, and three barns and an attic, there was not room for all his acquisitions, and we have seen a bandy-legged claw-and-ball table be- side the hencoop, exposed to the weather, and several old sofas, of no mean design, with only tarpaulin to cover their gray hairs. With what eagerness, on our first visit, we mounted the store porch and approached the door. It was locked. We shook it and peered in. Against the window frame hung several brown silver salvers. They were dull and unpolished, but fine. Old candle- sticks, broken blue teapots, and the odds and ends of years of gathering filled the rest of the window. After peering for many minutes a man showed him- [147] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL self, who, spearing us with his single eye, suspiciously demanded to know if we wanted anything in partic- ular. What we wanted was to see the dealer, of whom we had heard, and then under his guidance to see his stock. So the first inquiry was for the dealer. "He 's over in Connecticut, to a sale." We naturally wanted to see the stock anyhow, having trolleyed out there for no other purpose. But the one-eyed seemed to resent any idea of look- ing at the stock and was even disinclined to accept a hint as to opening the door. No museum attendant, after the closing hour, could have been more disoblig- ing than was this supposed-to-be clerk in the middle of the afternoon. "Well, have you any open-work brass fenders'?" He grudgingly opened the door. We entered. But there was barely room to move. Back to back there were chests of drawers and shabby high-boys, there were sofas rampant, there were beds with test- ers and beds with low posts jostling one another, and there were chaotic masses of work-tables, candle- stands and mirror frames. On the walls, upon pegs, hung innumerable chairs. In the corners were piles of things randomly heaped, good, bad and indifferent merged indistinguishably. Our eyes grew accustomed to the dim light that fil- NEW YORK AND VICINITY tered in through dirty windows, and, although the one-eyed could not at once discover where any brass fenders were lost, we saw an inlaid dressing glass which greatly pleased us. But the man took a queerer turn and said that he did n't know what to charge, and, anyway, Mr. H didn't care particu- larly about selling that. So it was with many aawther thing; and the ran- dom prices he now and then consented to give seemed to have little connection with the value of the arti- cles, and we left him to lock up and returned to the city. On the occasion of another trip, a year later, we found the old man who was the collector of this great mass of treasure. And we discovered his secret. He really did not want to sell ! He wanted to gather in. A Sheraton sofa was picked out but he did not want it to leave his sight. He evaded putting a price on it. He showed a poor and featureless one and offered that instead. He had little to say and little to sell. He was a veritable miser of old furni- ture! He died, not long after this, and his heirs showed clearly that they were not of his way of thinking. For all the shabby old treasures were sent to Fifth Avenue, and during six days' rapid selling, following wide advertising, they were auctioned to make a New THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL York holiday. They were sold in their shabby, un- repaired condition, so that the buyers could see pre- cisely what they were getting, but there was the pro- viso that every article should be put in perfect con- dition, and be properly polished, before delivery. This occurred but recently, and is another example of twentieth-century opportunities. In contrast to that man of Long Island is one whose place is near the Kill van Kull. This man's establishment has a widespread area of back rooms behind the store front, but the stock is so variable that there may not be a single piece worth buying or there may be a dozen choice bits. We have never seen the owner at his shop. He spends his time in trips that take him not only to near-by points but even as far as Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. His wife meets customers ; and though she does not seem to know a Chippendale from a Jacobean by name, she knows them in value, and her "Them 's seven dollars," or "Them 's one dollar" covers the ground. When, perhaps in Westchester or in some New Jersey village, this man finds a Heppelwhite side- board or a slant-top secretary, he sends word to a few of his customers clients is perhaps a good word NEW YORK AND VICINITY and they are in his shop when the crated piece ap- pears. He takes it as a compliment to his shrewdness when his shop is empty of all but the trash that seems bound to accumulate about every antique dealer, no matter what his knowledge. We came to know the dealer personally in a curi- ous way. One morning, some men were heard, with- in the portico of our home^ apparently fumbling at the knocker on the front door. Then came a voice : "I '11 give you three dollars for one like that." It was clearly a case of one man offering another a price for a knocker like our treasure from Quebec, with the added implication, in the absence of knowledge of identity and purpose, that a price was put upon that particular knocker ! Now, that was not a thing to be taken lightly; and so there was the prompt overhauling of two forms disappearing down the village street. Then, for the first time, was met the owner of the Kill van Kull shop ! With a local guide he was cov- ering the neighborhood, seeking what old pieces of furniture he could, financially speaking, devour, and in all honesty of purpose he had been explaining to his guide that knockers such as ours are always desir- able. He came back to the old brick building and, enter- THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL ing, his eyes at once glanced upon a treasure which erstwhile had stood in his own rambling establish- ment. He recognized it at once, for thus it is with the enthusiastic vendor of treasures. Then he looked at our other things, and, moved thereto by fellow feeling (for this class of dealer is always a lover of furniture at heart, and not a salesman), he launched into curious details of what his trips had taught him, especially in regard to our particular countryside; telling of here a cupboard, there a chest of drawers, there an old clock, which he had been on the trail of and in hopes of getting but which we might secure even if he did not. His familiarity with roads and houses was astonishing. He had unearthed curious secrets of garret and cellar, and frankly talked of them. And from him we learned to realize more fully, not only what treasures the perseverance and ingratiating ways of such men secure, but also that there are country dwellers who, ready enough to sell to the amateur, will not sell to the professional dealer. By way of contrast there has sprung up in the immediate vicinity of New York, within driving or easy automobiling distance of the city, a new type of shop, fascinating in appearance, where the wares are spread through sundry rooms, with an air of furnish- NEW YORK AND VICINITY ing rather than of display, and where, in the midst of a glow of polished mahogany and Sheffield plate, luncheon and tea are served, so that while you eat you are tempted. The opportunity for talk while tea is sipped leads to many a purchase, large and small, and a most delightful sort of shopkeeping is thus carried on. As to reliability and genuineness, it is merely as it is everywhere else that is, the judgment of the buyer himself must always in the last resort be relied upon to pick the true from the false, if any should be false. On the Jersey side of the Hudson, less than twenty miles from New York City, we called on an aged couple on the day of the fiftietl/ anniversary of their wedding. And their house is one of the many re- minders that much of the antique is still to be found. But, alas ! their sitting room that day displayed an incongruous sight. For in a semi-circle were ten armchairs of painfully modern construction, sent in as anniversary gifts by relatives, and these chairs had displaced the charming old furniture that the cou- ple loved. But elsewhere in the house there were still the treasured old articles. After a while, we strolled out into the garden, and we all sat down beside an overgrown mass of fragrant box under the shadow of an ancient well- [1/3] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL sweep, where moss pinks were growing in fragrant beds. And the dear old lady gave us strawberries and cream in delightful old saucers of lustre-ware, and the pitcher and bowl were of lustre-ware as well. Somehow, it was all like a leaf out of the past; the fine old faces, in an environment still older. It is one thing to state, in broad generalization, that within the immediate vicinity of New York there are countless articles of old furniture ; it is an- other to tell definitely what some particular locality can show, so that the collector may be stimulated to new efforts and a deeper enthusiasm. And so, selecting one single village, we took its furniture census. The village is less than two hours by rail from New York, it is a village of ancestry, of the leaven of the Colonies and the Revolution. It is, too, a village in whose vicinity, upon little lanes and cross- roads, still dwell colored folk, lineal descendants of those slaves of New York who were not freed until three-quarters of a century ago. The village has more old furniture than some; it has less than others; it may therefore well stand as an example of what still exists in some of the towns not far from the metropolis. For sale? Most fortunately, no ! For if the old- [154] " O era. NEW YORK AND VICINITY time treasures were all upon the market the field would all too soon be exhausted. And yet, by chance or mischance, almost anything is apt some time to be obtainable. The piece which cannot, to- day, be purchased at any price, may be for sale to- morrow. And when such things are for sale, it would please those who have long treasured them to know that they are to pass into the hands of such as shall long treasure them in turn. Here, literally enumerated, naught to exaggerate nor aught to set down excessively, is what is in that town. Beginning on the outskirts of the village, there is a rambling old house, connected with the literary his- tory of a bygone generation, and in this house there are silver candlesticks and two silver candelabra, a Chippendale chair, a set of fine old Canton china, and two good corner-cupboards built into a wainscoted wall. Next comes a still more ancient house : a picture- esquely low-eaved cottage, sheltered under the shoul- der of a hill; and here are an Empire sofa, an old settee, rush-seated and slender-spoked, blue coverlets, and, chief pride of the cottage, a fine armchair that was made more than a century and a half ago. Another house ; and here are a grandfather's clock, [1/7] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL old silver, Windsor chairs, and a Heppelwhite side- board sadly broken but with all the fragments care- fully kept with intent to repair. Continuing, we reach a house whose stately charm, antedating the Revolution, lies in gambrel roof, and small-paned windows, and felicitous chimneys, and white paint, and perfect proportion of parts, and magnificent encompassing trees. And it holds wealth of the old-fashioned, to match such an exter- ior chests of drawers, innumerable tables, a tall clock, a wardrobe with bonnet-top, a cabinet, a side- board and many chairs. On the door is an old brass knocker. The setting down of these literal facts must seem like a fairy tale to those who believe that almost all old-fashioned furniture has been seized upon. In another house there is a really splendid chest of drawers, there are old brass fenders, blue and white coverlets, blue Spode, a particularly beautiful pair of brass tongs, a grandfather's clock, a brass knocker, an old tip-table; and, until recently, there lay, for- gotten and neglected, in the wagon-shed, a fine old sofa, which needed but renovation to make it an or- nament to any house. Chippendale chairs, Windsor chairs, an Empire sideboard with pillars and claws, a mirror such is the treasure of another house; and, continuing the NEW YORK AND VICINITY furniture census, we next note a little old dwelling, inhabited by an aged widow, where there are a full tea-set of beautiful Lowestoft, a pair of andirons, and a tall clock. Across the street from this house is one in which are an old Dutch wardrobe, paneled, of oak, a four- post bed, a rare mantel clock in brass and mahogany, a lustre pitcher, a chest of drawers, a bookcase with paneled glass, and a brass knocker. A little down the street, and there stands a house wherein is a fine old set of drawers. Until a few years ago the house was furnished from top to bottom with things ancient, most of which were widely scat- tered at an auction following the owner's death. Another house, and we find an old mirror; in an- other, a Sheraton desk ; another, cranes and pothooks. Then a house where, until recently, there were a number of splint-bottom and Windsor chairs, which some one from New York, finding that the owner would sell, purchased for twenty-five cents apiece. Another house shows a brass door-knocker; an- other has a candlestand and a fine desk. And then comes one, lived in by a venerable man, whose taste, running to the modern, has filled his old white house with furniture of the latest design, while his attic is crowded with old-fashioned pieces which he will not even think of parting with and which he rarely per- [159] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL mits any one to see, he being over ninety and not much liking to be disturbed. A brass knocker on the side door, the fifth thus far in this little village, is the only sign, below the garret, that the building holds anything of old-time note. Another house, and there is a rare set of three din- ing-tables, rope-legged, and of mahogany; there is a brass fender; there is an old-fashioned dressing-glass and table; there are old blue dishes; there is an old traveling-case, of mahogany and brass, with its bot- tles and drinking-glasses. Another house has an old and desirable sideboard, which a dealer's recent offer of fifty dollars did not tempt the owner to part with, and a brass knocker. In another there is a mirror of mahogany, with or- molu mounting. Another has a Sheraton table, a bandy-legged table, a knocker, and chairs and candle- sticks. In the next a banjo clock had just been sold. In another are a Chippendale chair, a mirror with acorn drops, old-time silhouettes, a mahogany dining- table, and tea-tables of ancient make. Almost through the little village now, we come to a house in which are an unusually beautiful chest of drawers of Empire design, a Lowestoft cream- jug, rush-bottomed chairs of very graceful pattern, and very fine andirons. NEW YORK AND VICINITY On the farther edge of the village is a house in which are two sideboards, one Sheraton and one Em- pire, an Empire cheval glass, a diamond-paned sec- retary, andirons, tip-tables, two chests of drawers, and eigjit old decanters of cut glass ! Near by is a house with a brass knocker, and a French bed that has roll ends. Then a house in which is a great four-post Empire bed, a set of Sheffield- plate silver in fascinating shapes, and an Empire clock. And in the immediate vicinity of the village there is a house in which are a beautiful specimen of five-slat chair, a Continental mirror, old andirons and candlesticks; and another house wherein are an Empire table, with pillars elaborately ornamented, a swell-front cabinet, and a tea-table. Confident though we were, from past experiences, that we should find many a specimen of the old, the total of the enumeration amazed us. It is putting it moderately to say that in that one little village there is enough to stock a museum. And there is many an- other village with treasure equal or superior. It is not only the big but the little, not only the piece of fine furniture but the piece of what may be called kitchen furniture, which one may unexpec- tedly find. THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL On a Westchester road, at a long distance from any other house, we once came across one of those pathetic marks of where a habitation had been a line of stone foundation and a few scattered bricks. Fire had utterly destroyed the house ; no attempt had been made to rebuild ; the ruins had been overhauled with care, and then vines had grown clusteringly over the burnt stone and brick. There, unearthed by some chance, by the sliding of some pile of ashes, lay a huge iron gipsy kettle with three legs. Picturesque in shape it was and of un- usual size. There was nobody of whom to buy it, it was as deserted and lost as if it were in mid-ocean, and so it went along with us. It was red with rust, but a coat of dead black transformed it into a most satisfactory wood-box, to stand beside one of our fire- places in which the andirons are of iron the wood- box in the adjoining room, where the fireplace fittings are of brass, being a large brass kettle, even larger than the iron one just described, which a farmer's wife gladly disposed of to us in exchange for a preserving kettle of modern make purchased for her at the village store; for there are many who are quite ready to give the ancient in exchange for the new. In one particular, the vicinity of New York, es- NEW YORK AND VICINITY pecially here and there on Long Island, and a little in the Hudson River region and in near-by parts of Westchester County, is different from the rest of the United States in that it shows more of the Dutch in- fluence. And this means not only Dutch ideas and peculiarities, as, the Dutch paneled armoires and heavy cupboards, and the blue tiles, with Scripture subjects, around fireplaces, and similar things to go with the old Dutch "stoops," but the influence of the Orient; for the Dutch, great traders that they were, brought home with them from the East, along with the spices and silks for which they more specifically sailed, specimens of ebony furniture, of teakwood, of sandalwood, of wicker, and the grotesque designs of the Chinese. The quest of old-time furniture leads one into many a strange and interesting place. But never was there a more picturesque experience encountered by furniture-lovers than befell us in the hilly region north of New York City. At the foot of a long, steep road, a road at whose summit had taken place one of the noted tragedies of the Revolution, stood an old broad-fronted house. It was on the verge of becoming decrepit. One end had noticeably sagged, and there was a tottering nod- dingness about the entire structure. On the door THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL was a fine old brass eagle knocker, and, wishing to make some inquiry about the roads, it was gently touched gently, because of the peacefulness of the ancient house and of the environing hills, glorified by a sun-bright haze. And as the knock at the door of an ancient castle might be expected to draw forth an armored custo- dian, so this knock summoned a fitting warder An old, old man, stepping out of the dim past into that old doorway, appeared there. He was straight and slender and tall. His hair was iron-gray and his black tie was worn like an old-time stock. His tail-coat hung in full folds about his shrunken form. A distinguished-looking man he was, and he gave the wished-for information in a soft and gentle voice, and with the manner of old-fashioned courtesy. Asked if his house were a house of history: "Not exactly," he replied; "and yet, many a man of his- tory, many an officer, has eaten and slept here. This was an inn long before the Revolution and during that war, and this road was one of the principal high- ways between New York and Connecticut. But won't you come in, both of you?" his glance taking in the waiting figure in the carriage. We entered the hall: a hall of considerable dig- nity. An old-fashioned lantern hung from the cen- NEW YORK AND VICINITY tre, and a stairway swept upward with low and easy steps. Political woodcuts of the past were lined along the side of the hall, and an ancient clock ticked steadily as it had ticked there for decades. In^very room was some treasure. But, best of all, in a broad, low room directly off the hall, there was a carved mantel of wood and there was a rarely beautiful Heppelwhite chair with characteristic shield-back of fine mahogany. This chair, not strong structurally, was very heavy when lifted, showing the density of West Indian mahogany. There was a Sheraton side-table with wings and reeded legs; in a cupboard in the chimney-corner there were bits of china which he lovingly took up and told about; and there was a Chippendale table, than which we have never seen one more beautiful, with cabriole legs, and claw-and-ball feet, and elab- orate workmanship in every detail; the edges were carved and the sides were carved and the bends of the cabriole legs were carved. He fondled the old things caressingly, and spoke gently of the past. "I am ninety-three years old," he said quietly. In a corner beyond the marvelous table stood an old octagonal mahogany music-stand, and on the table lay a flute. We knew at once that it could be THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL only his. And could any musical instrument be more fitting ! His eyes lingered lovingly upon it. At a hint that it would be a pleasure to hear him, he took it up. Then his blue eyes grew brighter, his face lighted up anew, and he played old tunes, ballads of the long ago, with a soft shrilling of the notes, al- most as if a ghost were playing in a dream. [166] CHAPTER IX THE FIELD IN PHILADELPHIA AND VICINITY FOR the lover of the old, the sign of ancient furniture always possesses a potential attrac- tion, whether it be represented by the "Anti- chita" of a back street in Perugia, the "Anciens Meu- bles" of Tours, or the "Antiques'" of Fourth Avenue or Pine Street. On our own side of the water, antiques of all things are apt to run in fashions, although fashion is supposed to have nothing to do except with the things of to-day. In the fashionable shops, fashion rules in the set- ting forth of the old ! At one time no prominent es- tablishment will dare be without its pair of stone lions; at another time, the old stone cistern-top of Italy, with grooves worn by the ropes of centuries, will be everywhere in view. One suspects that the ropes are sometimes of the twentieth century, but 1*167] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL none the less, if there is a place to put it, one cannot be in the fashion without the stone well-curb! At another time, no sign of stone is to be seen, except on inquiry, and articles of wood arbitrarily rule. And, according to fashion, the ruling wooden furniture may be Dutch or French or our own Colonial. But the real collector cares nothing for the passing fashion, and is therefore likely to be best pleased with the out-of-the-way shops where fashions are un- known. In Philadelphia, as in other large cities, these are tucked away in odd corners. Not that the large shops are to be arbitrarily avoided. One may find there precisely the genuine bit he has been searching for. And in Philadelphia, on an average, prices are likely to range lower than in New York. Philadelphia and its vicinity offer a fruitful field. A loan exhibition given in the Germantown quarter of the city, only a few years ago it was in 1902 gave some indication of the prodigious number of old pieces still preserved. After all, it need not be wondered at. For in that section there is an impos- ing array of Colonial homes, and the entire city is a city of ancestry. Not only, therefore, did all the exhibits have a local habitation, but many were con- nected with historical names. There was profusion [168] PHILADELPHIA AND VICINITY of old silver and pewter, of brass and china; there was profusion of swell-front chests, of pieces of in- lay and marquetry, of pieces of oak and walnut and cherry and mahogany. Naturally, too, there were fine sjtecimens of the Windsor chair, Philadelphia being the city in which that style of chair was first made in this country, not long after King George the First established its vogue in England. One knows that the field must be broad in which there are such gleanings, and so the quest of old-time furniture thereabouts has the constant fascination of probable success. When the breaking up of some old family, or the death of its last representative, brings about the dis- persion of old furniture, and the goods are to be sold, it is not customary, as it is in New York, to hold the sale at a shop, but in the old house itself. One such sale, and it was typical, was held not long ago in a house in the central part of what is known as Old Philadelphia, near Rittenhouse Square. An aged spinster, last of her line, had died, and strangers went tramping through the house that had sheltered her forefathers and then herself. Even here, with the passing of the years, the mod- ern had crept in, but there was still much of the old, particularly in the sitting room, which, in accordance THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL with ancient Philadelphia custom, was situated on the second floor of the extension, above the dining- room: this situation of the sitting room of the old families giving that darkened effect to the houses, after nightfall, that so puzzles visitors from other cities. There were book-cases, and tables, and chairs; there was a rare dressing-glass, in old lacquer; there was a fire-screen, a tiny square of mahogany, which pushed up and down, adjustably, upon a slender spindle ; and there was some of the rare Belleek ware, made in Ireland half a century ago; a tea service, cups and saucers and teapot and bowl, all of the dis- tinguished Belleek shape, low, squat, and broad: a kind of ware whose manufacture has been revived in Ireland, of late years, and is coming again upon the market. In the numberless little trips which may be made in the vicinity of Philadelphia the impression of the existence of a great quantity of old-time material, in private houses and in shops, is confirmed. At a town upon the Delaware, less than an hour by rail from the city, we found a curious little wist- ful-faced, droop-shouldered man; silent, rather; al- most shy, indeed. His shop seemed to have but lit- tle in it. A few candlesticks, a piece or two of ma- [170] PHILADELPHIA AND VICINITY hogany, some china which, if one were disposed to be captious, might scoffingly be set down as modern reproduction. At jjrst the man was torpidly indifferent ; but we knew of him by reputation and therefore knew that there was more to him and to his ancient furnishings than appeared upon the surface. But nothing had given a hint of what was really to come. Slowly he thawed; slowly he perceived that he was talking to some one who appreciated and cared; and he led the way into a long and narrow room be- hind his little shop. It was full of treasures; and then he led the way upstairs, through his living rooms, and into apartments filled to overflowing with ancient things, where old cupboards and secre- tary drawers hid quantities of glass and genuine deep blue china. Then down the street we went with him, and through a passageway, into a cold and drafty barn crowded full with antiquities. In one of the dark corners stood, side by side, a high-boy and a chest-on-chest, names often used in- terchangeably, although, properly speaking, a chest- on-chest comes practically to the ground, whereas a high-boy leaves sufficient space for cabriole legs. This high-boy was one with its top constructed for [171] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL the display of china, and in appearance it was not much later than the date at which high-boys first ap- peared; that is, about the beginning of the eigh- teenth century. The chest-on-chest was of a later date; naturally enough, as, although there were a few in use by 1 750, they did not become at all com- mon before the time of the Revolution. Then there was an odd interlude. There was still more to show, he said, but he had promised to act as pall-bearer at a funeral and he hoped that we would excuse him for a while. He assumed black hat, black coat, and air of decent mournfulness, and we watched him go away. With an open trust much at variance with his initial and almost churlish tor- pidity, he offered to leave us in charge of one of his places, to look about, while he was away! But we did not wish to remain as guardians in his absence, and therefore interested ourselves in the task, that at first seemed hopeless, of finding an attractive lunch- eon: and found, after a while, a wonderful darky, in an unpromising looking place, who gave us delec- table deviled crabs and other fruit of the sea. Then back from the funeral came the dealer; but not until he was out of his black clothes and their concomitant mournfulness was he himself again. This time he led us to a boathouse, with a shaky eg. PHILADELPHIA AND VICINITY floor, where through great ragged holes we could see the Delaware coursing beneath. Here were gath- ered mqpy additional pieces of the old and valuable. Once, in New York, we came upon a corner-cup- board holding up a roof which had settled down upon it ; once in New Jersey, we looked at a chest of drawers, with a serpentine front, which stood in a corner where the floor was dangerously sinking; and here, on the Delaware, were pieces of furniture which threatened to fall into the river if we should step across the shaky floor to reach them. There were chairs needing faith as well as works to restore them, there were candlestands which, re- versing nature's law, could maintain a balance only when standing on their heads. Everything was as he had obtained it ; nothing had been repaired, noth- ing restored. But in spite of a glad willingness to show his wares to those who would appreciate, it was clear enough that his personal desire, apart from needful considerations of prosaic dollars, was to hoard and not to sell. In truth, this man and his establishment were cur- iously, in character, like the old collector and his rambling warerooms on Long Island; and since doc- tors are a class by themselves, and lawyers and business men and mechanics, why should there not [175] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL be distinctive traits about a class who handle and sell the old for the love of it ! If one is to consider all of Pennsylvania as being in the vicinity of Philadelphia, it opens a wide field. The line of southern counties is rich in articles of the early time, and one may go as far as Westmoreland County and the Ligonier valley, where the stone houses, stone chimneyed, give a not misleading prom- ise of early treasures, or even so far as that region of homely and delightful romance, Mrs. Deland's "Old Chester." One may explore the south and west of Pennsylvania with deep pleasure in the exploration and with satisfaction in results; but it is not posi- tively needful that one should go so far; there is much to be had within easy distance of Philadelphia. We wandered at random, one autumn day, through a charming inland town, some twenty-five miles from the city. Old trees shaded the old houses and old-fashioned flowers bloomed in the old gar- dens. We turned a corner, rounding a large and com- fortable house, and saw, standing within a porch of generous proportions at the side, a thin and fluttery elderly little Quakeress. She was talking with a townsman, who was halt- ing with reluctant feet, looking back longingly at a [176] PHILADELPHIA AND VICINITY bundle of magazines which he had just set down, and trying to overcome his cautious frugality. "The^ may take them or leave them, just as thee chooses," said the little Quaker lady, bringing the incident to a close with a mild peremptoriness under which the man went shamefacedly away. It was evident that at this house, although there was no sign or announcement, something was being sold. If one thing, why not another 4 ? And it was a charming house, with charming possibilities. And so one of us stepped inside, and the Quaker- ess stood smiling a greeting from the top of the few steps. "Can you tell me if any one in this town has a claw-footed sofa, and would be willing to part with itV "We have one here, and are willing to sell it to thee," was the reply. She asked us in, and called her husband. And we saw, directly facing us, set in front of a closed fireplace, precisely such a sofa as we were in search of. In every particular it answered the re- quirements which we had in mind. It was eight feet long, inside measurement. It was done in dark leather, however, rather worn by years of use, in- stead of its original covering. It was a thing of [177] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL perfect lines and curves. It had claw feet, and above them were elaborately broad and spreading wings. Each arm was in a superb double curve, and the faces of the arms were beautifully carved in acanthus leaves, with the carving narrowing and broadening to follow the changing line of the wood. The back was elaborately carved from end to end, with a charming interrupted roll in the middle. At each end, under the lower curve of the arm, was a space for one of the old-fashioned hard cylinder pil- lows a fashion of much older date than this sofa, but revived a century ago but we discarded the pil- lows as the sofa was finer and in better proportion without them. This sofa had been used by the two Quakers for thirty years, and before that had been in possession of the one from whom they obtained it for some forty-odd years; tracing back the pedigree, thus, to 1830. Previous to 1830 there is no record of it; but it could scarcely have been much more than twenty years old at that time, as it is of early Em- pire style. The Quakers showed us through their house ; they had decided to sell what they had, and give up housekeeping, although they had been housekeeping all their married life. We went from room to room, [178] 3 T3 1 ! " rt -O * B O : 1 o '3 THE OUTFITTING OF A GUEST ROOM of course, it was quite impossible to find any paper like it to use in repairs. But here is a stratagem which may be suggestive to others who may come upon a similar problem. Very carefully, the paper was stripped from the broad chimney-breast above the fireplace, and the fragments, cut into pieces, of a shape to match the lines of the pattern, were pasted over the little holes and blemishes. There was enough to make the paper everywhere perfect in ap- pearance: everywhere but on the denuded chimney- breast. In covering that, a green cartridge paper, of a green to match the sprigs in the squares, was found. Upon this was placed, in relief, a white garland of Georgian style. The woodwork of the room was painted white. Andirons of black iron were placed in the fireplace. Brass candlesticks were set upon the dark marble mantel. Between them is a small bust, in faience, of a sober-faced Donatello boy. And, thus retaining the old wall-paper, there seems some- how to have been retained also the subtle charm of old atmosphere and simplicity. [369] CHAPTER XIX MAKESHIFTS THACKERAY, in his delightfully reminiscent description of a room full of "old armour, prints, pictures, pipes, china (all crack'd), old rickety tables, and chairs broken-backed," tells of utilizing a Mameluke's dagger for the toasting of muffins. So naturally does the collector turn toward expe- dients and substitutes that it would almost seem there must be some occult connection between things of the past and makeshifts. And it may be that some makeshifts which have come in our way may prove suggestive to other collectors, meeting unex- pected problems. Makeshifts are of two kinds: those which are in- tended to be permanent, and those which are for only temporary use the latter class representing, so to [370] MAKESHIFTS speak, the substance of things still hoped for and the former being an evidence of things that will not be seen. Among our own permanent makeshifts is an ar- rangement for a pair of candle-brackets. Needing a light upon either side of an old dressing-glass, the proper candelabra were searched for in vain. So two hat-hooks, of brass, of the largest size the big kind made to bolt through hat-racks were pur- chased. They have quite a satisfactory curve and stand up with a good deal of dignity. They are bolted through short pieces of wood which project a little above the back edge of the dressing-table. On the top of each hook is soldered the metal end of an electric light bulb of just the right diameter for a candle. And, to provide against drip, there is slipped over each candle-holder a glass disc of the kind long made and used for this purpose. Makeshifts are not necessarily small. On the contrary, they may be of considerable consequence. And in regard to this class it may be worth while to give an experience in the making of a makeshift fire- place. The dining room of a house in the city in which we lived just previous to adopting this old inn had two windows, both in one wall, opening on a brick-paved path and an eight-foot fence, the room [371] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL thus being in dull shadow, with nothing to relieve its box-like quality of shape. We possessed, to put in it, the corner-cupboard of Bethlehem, and had selected a very light yellow pa- per in a chintz stripe to heighten the ceiling and brighten the room. White paint and a light rug and ceiling, and very thin muslin at the windows, were materially to aid in the brightening effect. The corner-cupboard would fill one corner but a fireplace was needed in the other ! We did not own the house. It was a matter for cogitation. And the result of the cogitation was a determination to have a fireplace, of sorts, constructed. It was not the kind of a job to give a carpenter unless, indeed, one could discover a carpenter with imagination. To explain the idea would give a wrong impression of something absurd or else tre- mendously elaborate. Left by the outgoing tenant, in the cellar, were scrap ends of wood, a few long boards, a window sash and, most fortunate of all, and as if Fate had definitely intended it, a shelf with two heavy wooden brackets. We felt like Robinson Crusoe taking an inventory. One evening, after paperhangers and cleaners had gone home, saw and hammer were seized, and some [372] MAKESHIFTS of the boards were made into a sort of large frame- work, like a capital H, of the size of the corner into which the fireplace was to fit, and of just the length to reach from the ceiling to the floor. Pieces of wood were nailed, after mitering the ends, against the base of the wall, at the ceiling line, and in the centre. Then the H- frame was raised and nailed in place. The shelf was then adjusted as a mantel. Boards were placed as side panels. The open space be- tween shelf and ceiling was covered with light boards. These upper boards were then covered with pasteboard, tacked on, and all the cracks were liber- ally pasted over with cheesecloth. The window sash from the Robinson .Crusoe pile was sawed down into a piece framing three square openings, and this was placed immediately below the mantel-shelf, and over the apparent fire space. All was now ready for the paperhanger, and next morning, in papering the entire room, he papered right across the corner upon the boarded space above the mantel-shelf, and there was thus gained all the effect of a regularly covered wall. The panels on either side of the fire opening were painted white. A line was marked to indicate the hearth limits, and then, to secure a hearth-like aspect, melted glue was [375] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL spread over the space and, before it dried, fine brown sand, obtained at a bird store, was thickly whisked over it with a broom. There was thus obtained the appearance of a hearth of sandstone. Blue and white tile were fitted into the space in the section of once-while sash. The space behind the fire opening was so boarded in as to look like a fire-back, and this apparent fire-back was first painted red to resemble brick, next blackened with stove blacking and soot, and then, for a parting touch, whitened with gray soot, taken from the range flue and thrown against it indicating intense heat! Hickory sticks were piled within the fire space upon brass andirons. The mantel-shelf was given a few old pewter tankards to hold. A picture was placed on the apparent chimney-breast. And when a plate-rail was made to take in the corner fireplace in its course around the walls, the status of that fire- place as a fundamental part of the room was forever established. And, when all was done,< it looked like a simple, capable, well-proportioned fireplace; and never was there a single visitor who doubted that it was real and had always been there. It was also in that house that a problem in regard to lighting apparatus presented itself. In a promi- [376] MAKESHIFTS nent place was a chandelier of fairly good shape, ex- cept as to the four arms and the globes. To remedy this, a hint from an old church was acted upon. The tips and the globes were taken off, and four straight white porcelain candles, of the sort made to allow the gas to pass through them and burn at the tops, were put on. They looked precisely like four wax candles. Thus was secured a good-looking chandelier of candles, with the light of gas. Since coming to the old inn we have had various opportunities to use makeshifts, and quite a number of things jaave been adapted to some use more or less different from their original one. A bejlows possessed the advantages of age and shape, but that of usefulness was rather diminished by its being without a brass tip. But how easily the lack was remedied by using the nozzle of a piece of worn-out hose ! Two of the wooden doors beside the eight-foot fireplace were without handles; so, upon one was placed an ancient wrought-iron latch, found in the garret of a house built by Louis the Eleventh; and, from the other door, there now faces out, as a handle, the wrought-iron head of a lion, made for the end of a water pipe in an ancient garden. For fireplace woodboxes old kettles of iron or of brass are used. [377] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL The porch at the side of the house was bare of railing or banister. Two long straight-backed set- tees from an old ball room were fitted and fastened there, and at once there was not only a railing but an attractive set of seats from which to view the or- chard, the trees and the hills. The kitchen was rather short of cupboards, and, to supply what was needed, an old-fashioned secretary was set up in a corner, with drawers below and doors above. The shelf where the writing-slab folds back upon itself gives no suggestion of being a desk in its kitchen surroundings; it is merely a convenient nar- row shelf, midway up the side of the cupboard. There were no handles on the piece when it came to us, and we put on handles of white porcelain. It now looks precisely like a capable kitchen cupboard, and is eminently useful. For one of the upstairs rooms, an old cupboard, tall and of severe plainness of aspect, was made into an attractive wardrobe by the use of brass knobs for handles, and some white paint. In this same room stands a mahogany dressing-table, with the old glass whose setting of little drawers and swivel posts fitted the mirror so opportunely , Instead of placing the glass on top of a chest of drawers or on a muslin-covered dressing-table, a plain mahogany ta- [378] MAKESHIFTS ble was used, and a complete article of furniture in mahogany was thus formed. A most successful adaptation in silver is owned by a friend in the shape of two fern-dishes, four-footed, oval, of silver, and of old-fashioned workmanship, with a two-inch openwork rail. He showed a sol- dered hole in the bottom of each dish. "Yes; old cruet-stands. I had the handles sawed off and there you are !" - It^is impossible to offer much definite advice in regard to makeshifts, for it is seldom that the cir- cumstances of any two cases are precisely the same. Napoleon once wished a chemical experiment made immediately, in his presence. "But I have no pestle or mortar!" lamented the chemist. Instantly Napoleon was in a heat of impatient anger. "Re- member, sir," he said sternly, "that every table-top J5 a mortar and every chair-leg a pestle!" [379] CHAPTER XX FAKES: HOW TO RECOGNIZE AND AVOID THEM IT was long ago remarked, sagely, that the world is given to lying, and it is not charging the sellers of old furniture with more than the average of tergiversation to suggest that some of them make misrepresentations; although many a piece is pre- cisely what it is claimed to be, and many another is offered honestly upon its merits, of which the buyer must judge. As to date and history, there are peculiar tempta- tions toward misstatement. Many buyers attach so much higher a value to an article with a history that the manufacture of imitations with fine old dates cut on them is quite an industry. It is a particularly barefaced kind of imposition. And yet, dates are by no means always to be doubted. Sewall, he of diary fame, in getting a [380] FAKES: HOW TO RECOGNIZE THEM chest for each of his children, had each chest marked with the date of the youthful owner's birth. In learning to discriminate between the genuine and the imitation the old-furniture collector comes to see that there is much to consider and that con- stant watchfulness is necessary. Here is a rule which, in buying, gives a sense of security. It is: If less is paid for an antique than it could be made for, it must needs be genuine. But, after the buyer is satisfied as to the age, he may very properly pay much more than the cost of making, on account of considerations of rarity or shape. The danger of being imposed upon is further min- imized by buying articles that have not been re- stored. It is safer to buy them worn and unre- paired, and to have the mending and polishing done afterward. Entering, one day, an antique shop in an old Massachusetts town, we were told by the clerk that the proprietor was in the workroom behind. But it proved to be an inopportune time, and he was dis- tinctly embarrassed, for he was putting the finishing touches to a fine Chippendale chair. He grinned with a sort of sheepish defiance, and said: "At any rate, I made it out of the wood of an old tree, and so [381] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL it will really be an old chair. And I '11 stain it to look like mahogany !" An acquaintance, who possesses and highly prizes a supposedly ancient Chippendale of beautiful de- sign, has not noticed, or at least has not drawn a deduction from the notice, that there is yellow in the gleam of the wood at the edges qf the arms, where touching and handling have already begun to wear away the polish and the artificial stain. The chair was bought at the sale of some studio effects, but the buyer should not only have observed that the wood was not so heavy as good mahogany ought to be, but ought to have been suspicious of the deep red color, for it pointed infallibly to imitation or at least to mahogany ill-treated. With oak, deceit is often attempted. From two hundred to three hundred years ago, oak was what was most commonly used for furniture ; but, of that early period, it is seldom that a veritable piece is found, outside of museums; hence the temptation to counterfeit. There are various methods of darkening new oak to the color and appearance of old ; a curious one is to use a wash of old iron in hot vinegar, to give the req- uisite hue, before the piece is polished; or acids and stains and fumes may lend their aid. Another [382] Empire Console, bought in 1907, in New Jersey, for one dollar Low-boy of 1750, with Cabriole Legs and Original Brasses, from a cellar in Connecticut FAKES: HOW TO RECOGNIZE THEM method is to coat new-made oak furniture with paint, and then remove the paint, in patches, with potash. And, for the worm-holes that are so often found in the genuine articles, of different woods, they are looked upon by many as such indubitable signs of age that, to meet the demand, they are sometimes put into new wood, one method of perforation being with very fine drills. An acquaintance called one evening to inquire what we did to our old chairs and things when they had worm-holes, and he explained that he had ac- quired an old worm-eaten desk upon which he wished to apply the remedy immediately. We tried to laugh a little at the enthusiasm which would not permit another night of life to worms which had been at work for decades, but the inquirer was a new and very ardent collector. We told him to scrape, where the worm-holes were, to the bare wood, and with a brush dose all the holes with corrosive sublimate. We also suggested that where fuzz showed at a worm-hole a thin wire would sometimes drag out the worker. Being a doctor, he got corrosive sublimate without difficulty, and next day we went over to see his prize. The desk was of shapely Empire design, but the 1385] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL brasses were oval plates that did not belong with it. However, new brasses are often put on old pieces. But the thing looked wrong. The drawers, pulled out, showed great spills of ink and general duskiness. That is a master-stroke of the artful reproducer. Spilled ink within desk drawers is looked upon as the sign and symbol of extreme age it is offered as proof positive of antiquity when, as a matter of fact, a drawer is one of the last places where ink would by any reasonable chance be spilled. The cor- ners of the drawers were telltale. The dovetailing suggested machinery, being as even as the corner of a starch-box. And, somehow, the purchaser's pride seemed to have waned. Then, with a smile, came the words: "That sublimate wash is a good thing. I think the worms are pretty dead, now. Here J s one I dug out with a wire!" And he displayed an infinitesimal bird-shot. The blow was fatal to his collecting. Within a week his Morris chair was dragged again into light and he planned to "do" his dining room in Mission furniture. His dream of Empire was past. One of the things to be looked upon with suspicion is the finding of an old document, to the dealer's in- tense surprise, in a secret drawer. [386] FAKES: HOW TO RECOGNIZE THEM Old methods of dovetailing are seldom followed in reproductions. Look with doubt upon bureaus and desks whose brasses point to previous to. 1770 but whose drawers can be pushed in instead of being stopped by projecting edges. Preserve a cautious attitude toward pieces which, although in the main new, have had old parts grafted on them. Orna- ments and carvings, in relief, may be reproductions made by filling a mould with mahogany sawdust and glue, under pressure ; the mixture will take a polish, but has not the texture of the genuine wood. But, after all, buyers deceive themselves more often than sellers intentionally deceive them. And the collector will meet with quite as much honest misrepresentation as dishonest misrepresentation based upon mistaken family tradition or upon ignor- ance of styles. A dear old lady in Massachusetts prizes among the chief of her household possessions an ancestral bed "in which Washington once slept." She is ab- solutely sure of this, and it would be needlessly cruel to say anything to the contrary to her; but, alas ! the combination of twisted rope and pineapple and acan- thus leaf points to a period when Washington was "dust and his good sword rust." It may be added that the acanthus leaf, when found alone, although [387] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL it is usually associated with Empire, is an old orna- mentation as well, it being of the Renaissance. Family tradition, no matter how honest, how sin- cere, must always be received with caution. Even an unbroken tradition is never strong as to precise dates. Under the merging influence of time, cen- turies are blended and decades imperceptibly melt into one another. Many a piece of furniture of not more than one hundred years in age is held by family tradition to be "over two hundred and fifty years old." But if, for example, tradition has it, unbrokenly, that certain furniture was part of a wedding outfit of a certain couple, then the chances are that tradi- tion is true, and, without trusting to that for the date, the time of the wedding may be looked up in some record and the age of the furniture thus fixed. A friend who lives in a charming old Italian villa feels no doubt that the furniture is of the period of 1702, not only because there is every sign of age, but because tradition has it that the furnishings were part of the original furnishings of the villa, and the records declare that the house was built in 1702. More than anything else, a collector comes to cultivate plain common-sense in examining old fur- niture; he judges largely, of course, by his know- [388] FAKES: HOW TO RECOGNIZE THEM ledge of makes and styles, but he also weighs not only the statements of the would-be seller, whether he be a professional dealer or a simple householder, but also the probabilities of correctness, as gathered from the seller's personality, manner, and surround- ings, and the likeliness of his really knowing the ac- tual truth. And as experience and observation widen there comes a sort of intuition, a sixth sense, upon which one must learn to rely. Too much credulity and too great a readiness to doubt are alike to be avoided. When your old brass andirons totter and fall apart when a fire is built, and you see a stream of white solder on the hearth, do not too rashly decide that you have been deceived, for many a pair of gen- uine old andirons, in which the central interior rod has been worn out by time, has been repaired with solder instead of by blacksmith's work. A genuine letter from South Carolina, offering some old chairs and slender-legged card-tables, was shown year after year by one antique dealer to ex- plain the source of supply of a line of old pieces which was kept constantly replenished from the workshop. The glamour of that letter removed doubt from the minds of a long series of purchasers of "those dear little Carolinian tables and chairs." [389] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL Proprietors of the elaborate old-furniture shops study closely the pictures of furniture in the various collections, and also the descriptions given in books on furniture. In a recent book, one of the pictures was that of a beautiful mirror with its principal ornament missing. The author described the mirror in terms of high praise and suggested that the missing ornament was probably of gilt and urn-shaped. And already some of the large shops offer a "veritable antique" pre- cisely similar to that picture except that the missing ornament, richly gilt and of urn shape, is trium- phantly in place. There are many Empire chests of drawers in ex- istence that are spurious, and some of them are made ingeniously by splitting Empire bed-posts and using the pieces as pilasters on the front corners of very plain and simple chests of drawers. As many as sixteen pilasters can be had from one old set of high posts. The vaulting ambition to deceive sometimes o'er- leaps itself, as when genuine old Windsor chairs of hickory or ash are taken in hand and masqueraded into mahogany, so that a better price can be ob- tained. It is probably safe to say that no old Wind- sor chair was ever made in mahogany; certainly, if [390] FAKES: HOW TO RECOGNIZE THEM there ever were any, they were very few; mahogany was never deemed a good wood for the Windsor bendings. The grain of different woods can easily be learned at least, that of oak, and also that of nut woods, such as walnut. These, no matter how they are dyed or stained, still retain some characteristic which should never allow them to be mistaken for mahogany. A pillar which shows the flowerlike flames of ma- hogany is necessarily veneered, and the line where the veneer joins can be found; yet many a prospec- tive purchaser of a table whose pillar shows a flam- ing glow and a fine pattern in the grain such as are found only in quarter-sawed wood, is assured that it is solid mahogany. Dutch marquetry, in really beautiful pieces, is to a considerable extent sold nowadays; and more than once we have seen it described as "old" Dutch mar- quetry. Some of it may be old, for there was a great deal of fine marquetry made in the old days; but in the Holland workshops marquetry in old pat- terns is now turned out in large quantities. Much of it is highly desirable in shape; the only defect is a possible tendency not to stand the steam heat of American houses, there being a great number of lit- THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL tie pieces fastened on with glue. If the buyer does not look for age and history and association there is no reason why it should not be bought. "Old Dutch" is by common acceptation supposed to imply the Colonial period of Stuyvesant and Van Twiller and other Knickerbocker worthies, and so one is apt to consider "old Dutch silver" to be quite antique. There is, of course, genuine old Dutch sil- ver still obtainable ; but it is something that lends it- self readily to reproduction; and the market for it being great, and purchasers being very willing to be- lieve in its genuineness, there are, for example, more veritable old Dutch chatelaine bag-clasps for sale in New York than all the ladies of Amsterdam ever possessed. An officer of the Dutch army who knows a great deal about old silver, and has a fine collec- tion, especially rich in the quaint silver toys now so rare, has told us that little really good old silver is now to be had in his country, and that the making of reproductions is a recognized industry which de- ceives only the stranger. In the American market a piece of sixteenth century or seventeenth century Dutch silver is most probably only a copy, made in Holland, of a design of that period. And as for windmills and "Apostles" upon spoons of course, there are originals, but such things grow [39 2 ] Little Tables of Ancient Make i Tea-table with raised rim and snake feet. 2 Tilting table with "fire-screen" top. 3 Traded for a Brahma hen. 4 Tilting table of 1825. 5 A slender candlestand of 1770. 6 Heppelwhite work-table, inlaid in lines FAKES: HOW TO RECOGNIZE THEM on silverware in America much oftener than they did long ago in Germany and the Netherlands. A curious industry, which was never intended in its early days to possess any misleading trait, flour- ishes on the East Side of New York. The little shops of Russian Jew copperworkers began to be known, a few years ago, to a constantly widening public. The little dark rooms, where handicrafts- men work at forges just as their forefathers worked in Russia, began to be visited by wondering purchas- ers of the brasswork. People went away, telling of their prizes in "old copper." The number of these shops rapidly increased. The dealers soon found that Americans wished to believe that what they bought was old ; that visitors must have the ancient, "brought from Russia," with some far distant place of manufacture definitely proved by a hieroglyphical Hebrew mark. It is really admirable work, most of it, in samo- vars and platters and candlesticks, and there is a small proportion of the really old but if you have a dealer's confidence he will tell you that little of this really old goes to visiting buyers or to the up- town shops that have begun to handle these wares. When a public exhibit of old furniture is permitted to give incorrect information, it is peculiarly un- [395] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL fortunate. In this respect Philadelphia has several sins to answer for. In the collection of the oldest Philadelphia library is a grandfather's clock that is said to have been the property of Oliver Cromwell. This belief is based upon the tradition that the auc- tioneer who sold it, a half-century after Cromwell's death, declared that it had once been the Protector's. A slight enough basis, this, for the perpetuation of such a claim! Surely, never before or since was auctioneer's careless boast so honored ! One feels at once a sense of annoyance and incre- dulity, and then wonders if there is no way of set- tling such a question. And there is. For the name of the maker of the clock is upon it, and, from the records of the association of clockmakers it is learned that he did not finish his apprenticeship and reach the dignity of maker until after Cromwell's death. In examining this or other clocks, it is well to re- member that long pendulums were not applied to clocks until nearly 1660, that a paper calling atten- tion to an improved pendulum was read before the Royal Society ten years later, and that not until about 1680 did pendulums begin to be commonly made in London. Short pendulums came in at a still later day. In the same collection is a fine old desk, once Wil- 1396] FAKES: HOW TO RECOGNIZE THEM liam Perm's. It is genuine; but incorrect restora- tion put upon it the bonnet-top of a later period, and not until after many years of exhibition, and of giv- ing a wrong impression of style, did the manage- ment, very recently, have the incorrect top taken off. In the extremely valuable Girard collection is a desk, with a music-box concealed in its top, upon which one plainly reads the date, "1795." But it is of a style not made until into the iSoo's, and the observer is at once unsettled and disturbed. It is only with difficulty, the desk being in the centre of a railed-off section, that some small lettering can be made out to the effect that it is the music that is of the date of 1 795 ! Philadelphia is not the only place to show such mistakes of knowledge or judgment, for in the col- lection at Mount Vernon a beautiful chair of Louis the Sixteenth is marked as being pi the seventeenth century. The collector, seeking to ada to his own treasures, must be watchful in regard to "improved" pieces. The improvements may be highly admirable, but, even if so, he should see that no wrong impression of date is given by them and that they are not permitted to enhance the price unduly. "All things are not what they seern; skim-milk masquerades as cream;" [3971 THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL and so fine inlays are set deceptively into otherwise plain fronts, and homely board doors are replaced by doors of latticed glass, and ormolu mounts give dis- tinction to the undistinguished, and gorgeous handles supersede wooden knobs, and cabrioles take the place of straight legs upon many a chair and secretary all to the confusion of the un watchful. [396) CHAPTER XXI FINDS IN UNEXPECTED PLACES MANY has been the odd bit of information given by the old Austrian, he who fought at Solferino, but none so strange as what came one day in response to a comment that he never handled silver. He could not afford it, it would lock up too much money, he said ; and then an oddly benign look came into his eyes. "I will tell you where to go" ; and he gave an address in the heart of the busiest section of the East Side, a part of New York where an impor- tant shop of that kind would not be looked for. It was, he added, little known as a silver headquarters, except to the trade. The place proved to be a sort of clearing house for silver for the pawnshops of New York. In a long glass case were bundles upon bundles of thin old spoons and rat-tailed spoons, and queer punch la- [399] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL dies and huge foreign forks. On the wall, behind glass doors, were shelves upon which larger pieces were stored. And there, in a row, were four pieces of early Georgian silver, with ebony handles. They were fine and low, and plain except for a band of little oval panels in relief. Every line in them was a delight. They showed a row of hall- marks sufficient to fascinate any collector. We were offered them by weight Georgian silver by weight! and for less than silverware of modern workmanship would command on Broadway; only eighty-five dollars. The hall-marks were copied for the pleasure of looking them up in Cripps; but it was necessary to think over the price a little, and they were gone on our return. Old treasure must be snapped at in such a place; not dawdled over as when one buys in fine surroundings at fine prices. The clerk seemed to share our disappointment. Most of their customers, he said, were dealers. He had sold the Georgian silver to a little shop off Fifth Avenue. He also added that his stock was low this in spite of full cases! for eight thousand dollars' worth of old silver had just been sent to New Or- leans to stock up the antique shops for the Mardi Gras crowds of strangers. [400] FINDS IN UNEXPECTED PLACES Delicious, this ! and explanatory too, for we have seen "old New Orleans silver" which the owners had purchased in that city and "knew to be French" in spite of hall-marks which they ought to have known were English. Always is the pleasure of a find increased by the fillip of unanticipation. As when we found, one day, quite by accident, that in another part of the East Side is located a company that makes a spe- cialty of tearing down old buildings, and offers for sale wreckage of every conceivable kind, including what a chance for the possessor of some old house which needs restoration! mantels and chimney- pieces, fluted pillars, mahogany doors, and fan- lights, One day, the janitor of our apartment house, mending something about the lock of an inside room, remarked that we seemed to have considerable old- time furniture. "Down in the basement," he went on, "there is an old-fashioned looking table that my wife wants me to split up and throw in the furnace. It 's only in the way. I don't know anything about it, but it has lion's feet and eagle's wings. I '11 sell it to you for a dollar if you want it." This was one of those chances that are not to be neglected. Of course, the table might be worth [401] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL nothing at all except for its otherwise predestined fate of firewood; but almost anything in furniture is worth the chance of a dollar. "I '11 take it; just fetch it up, please." And in a few minutes it was in the room; an Em- pire table, with a swing-and-fold top thirty-six inches by thirty-six, and with splendid claw feet and wings. It is of superb San Domingo, with an up- right pillar showing remarkable fire and glow. And offered and bought and delivered for just one dollar ! It needed somewhat of polishing but what of that ! Since then, we have been offered fifty dollars for it, by a dealer who held the money temptingly. But we considered that, although we might have other opportunities of getting fifty dollars, we might never again have the chance of getting such a superb old table in the very heart of New York City. A friend had often heard her mother tell, with re- gret, of old pieces of furniture which had been prac- tically or literally given away, many years before, and at length she began to think seriously of it all. She learned into what household most of the things had gone; she knew that they went not as precious bits but as cast-offs; and, visiting there, she learned that the people would be keenly gratified to receive new pieces of modern make in place of the now bat- [402] FINDS IN UNEXPECTED PLACES tered antiques. An arrangement was thereupon made, highly satisfactory to both ! That was in Ohio. Now, here is an incident from New York. The granddaughter of one of the early vice-presidents felt a strong desire to recover some of the ancient family furniture, which, before she was born, had been scattered at a public sale, on the re- moval of her grandfather from one city to another. She made careful inquiry but could only find trace of a certain set of three tables, which had been pur- chased by a family whose address she learned. She went there, although it involved something of a journey. She found the descendant of the pur- chaser using the tables. The case was explained; the granddaughter said that she would dearly like to possess some of the furniture which had belonged to her distinguished ancestor, but that she did not wish, of course, to take away anything which the present possessor particularly prized. Whereupon the three tables were sold to her, with ready cheerfulness, for precisely the sum which, according to an old family record, had been paid for them so long before. The finding of brass or iron treasure on a farm junk pile, or forgotten upon a high ledge in a barn, can scarcely be classed among the unexpected, for the experienced collector comes to consider such [4031 THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL places as natural nooks for forgotten door-handles, cranes, and odds and ends. But when a friend of ours, in Ohio, discovered a fine bit of pewter, a platter, of English make, so lit- tle thought of that it had become the dinner dish of a wheezy pug, that may fairly be ranked among the unexpected. We ourselves had an interesting experience along to some extent similar lines. An ancient handi- craftsman, in ancient Padua, was eating his dinner, in a corner of his very dark little shop, from a really good pewter plate with a beaded edge. He wanted but a trifle for it, and it became ours, and is one of the pieces of pewter upon the long shelf above the eight-foot fireplace, maintaining its claim to distinc- tion as a piece of old Italian make and as coming direct to our hands from the hands of an old man in one of the most fascinating of all cities. One of the strangest experiences was that of a friend in a charming region of New York State. Upon inheriting a beautiful old house, long ante- dating the Revolution, he looked through it, and, getting to the garret, saw that it was pretty well filled with apparent rubbish which he ordered to be cleaned out. He had not, at that time, acquired a taste for antique shapes; he was, on the contrary, [404] FINDS IN UNEXPECTED PLACES well satisfied with what is colloquially known, in New York City, as the style of Louis Fourteenth Street. His old servant, inherited with the estate,, and holding great respect for the family and its tradi- tions, respectfully hinted that there were old pieces of furniture among the apparent trash. But the new owner was indifferently inexorable, and the gar- ret was emptied. But mark the sequel. Years passed. The liking for the antique came upon our friend. He saw a great light, so to speak. He loathed what he had once loved and loved that to which he had once been indifferent. He determined to set about making his home the visible sign of the inward grace that had newly come to him. And he lamented in sackcloth and ashes that the family pieces he had once had in his very possession were no longer there to form the nucleus of the collection that he was now bent upon securing. The faithful old servitor heard his master express- ing vain regrets. His dark face glowed with happi- ness. His old eyes sparkled. He led his wonder- ing employer to the loft above the wood-house, and there most of the treasures still were! Moth and rust had not corrupted nor had thieves stolen. They [405] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL had been kept all those years, through the dumb faithfulness of the old servant. And the tale has been told us in that very house, and in the midst of the things thus strangely preserved. An acquaintance owns a fine old pair of brass and- irons; and she loves to tell how she became the pos- sessor of them. She had, for years, longed to visit her early home in the Western Reserve, and at length was able to do so. She went to the old house ; she roamed through the rooms which she had not seen for thirty years but which were still strongly fixed in her memory. At night, she sat in front of where a fireplace had been where, indeed, it still was, but boarded in with a heavy frame. She told of a splendid pair of andirons, "rights and lefts," of brass, which had been used in that fireplace in her girlhood. They had gone, so the people told her; everything of that sort had been cleared away long ago. Yes ; it was too bad ; for if they had known that anybody cared for that sort of thing But everything had gone. And, to give ocu- lar evidence of the changed aspect of the denuded fireplace, the heavy frame was moved aside and there, seeing the light of day for the first time in a quarter of a century, were the andirons ! A friend the same one that took the pewter plat- FINDS IN UNEXPECTED PLACES ter from the lunching dog thought that she would like to secure some old sporting prints from an aunt in the country. So thitherward she went, armed with a bundle of towels of fine linen on the chance that a trade might be welcome. But, alas! the prints had disappeared years ago. The original frames had been preserved, but not the pictures. Within the frame had been placed prize oleographs from one of the popular religious week- lies. She was disappointed; but she gave the linen towels, just the same, mentioning, with a laugh, to her aunt, what she had had in mind to propose. The* aunt was full of regrets. She was so sorry that the pictures had gone. She could not even remember what had been done with them. But she insisted that her niece should at least take the frames ! This was embarrassing, but unavoidable; and then, at home, the sporting prints were found, for they had never been removed and were merely covered by the oleographs ! We know of a fine old silver spoon which was dug up, one day, in a garden patch! And, more unex- pected than that, was the discovery by ourselves, one day in a boarding house in New York, of a charming Sheraton table. We were placed, on entering the [407] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL dining room, at a little individual table at one side, where were the only unoccupied seats. The table was covered with a table-cloth which hung nearly to the floor. Something about the oval shape, and the pro- portions of the top, attracted us; and one of us reached under and felt the leg. It was slender and square and delicately grooved ! After dinner, an ex- amination was made, and the table was found to be a delightful example of old-fashioned Sheraton. Its oval shape came from two tiny leaves. A drawer, with original brasses, was at either end. The pro- prietor of the house had no idea that the table was anything more than ordinary, and it had been picked up just to be used as a handy table for a small space. "What do you think Mrs. W has in the storage bin in the cellar!" exclaimed our across-the-hall neighbor, one day, in New York. "She 's got a sil- ver salver as large as a table-top !" Having an acquaintance with Mrs. W , we spoke of the tray, mentioning our interest in old- fashioned things. It was an heirloom; almost all that had been saved from the dispersion of the family effects at her girlhood home in Tennessee. It was a salver of enormous size; a really superb piece. It was of Sheffield plate, with a border of grapevine leaves, An eighteenth-century, brick-paved, wainscoted hall, showing a Windsor chair with a desk arm "Crosswise on the wagon was an ancient claw-foot sofa" FINDS IN UNEXPECTED PLACES and stood on tiny low feet, just enough to raise it from the table-top or sideboard to avoid marking the woodwork if a hot dish or teapot were upon it. A strange thing, and a strange history, for the cellar of a New York apartment house! In a Western city, one Sunday afternoon, passing the shop of a carpenter, a glimpse was accidentally caught of what seemed to be a fine old table. It was small, but the corner of it that was visible pointed to age and workmanship. It being Sunday, no one was there; but a visit the next day showed that the table was indeed old, and it now has a place among our honored belongings, after being discov- ered by such a mere chance in a Western carpenter shop, where it would certainly not have been looked for. And this is remindful of an important hint; some- thing that all good collectors ought to know. That is, that the shop of the village undertaker, in many an Eastern town, and especially where the under- taker is a cabinet-maker as well, is a place never to be neglected in a local search. It comes about most naturally. Often, a death means the breaking up of a household and the dis- persion of the household belongings. And in such a case, who but the undertaker has the first chance ! THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL And too, when there is but little ready money, which is often the case where there has been a death in a village family, the undertaker is willing to take his pay in furniture. Especially, as we have noted, if he be a cabinet-maker as well ! A friend, admiring the great sofa that we obtained in a Pennsylvania town, begged us to accompany him on a trip there. He wanted a sofa, too. We said that the person from whom we had bought ours was selling nothing more, and that, anyhow, he had no other large sofa. But our friend was persistent. In such a town as we described, so he declared, there must be another fine sofa ready to be secured ! And, unwilling to cool such enthusiastic faith, we went with him. This time, we led the way to the undertaker, for in other towns we had come to know the invaluable secret of what a country undertaker is apt to have. Nor did he disappoint us. He cogitated. He grew grave. There had been a death, he said, in his solemn voice; and if we would but wait an hour till he could see ? There was certainly a sofa "And the bereaved" (he mumbled, respectfully, as he spoke this last word) "might possibly " And shortly we had the satisfaction of seeing him set out. Within the hour he returned. His progress up the [412] FINDS IN UNEXPECTED PLACES village street had all the effect of a triumph. It was raining, but he heeded not. He had often driven in the rain. His long and ancient coat, folded dis- creetly about him but drooping from the wet, his rusty, high hat, his long black wagon and his se- dately stepping old black horse, all gave dignity and solemnity to his progress. And placed crosswise on the wagon, and reaching far out on either side, was an ancient claw-foot sofa, proudly sweeping the width of the narrow street ! CHAPTER XXII THE END OF IT ALL f I ^HE smack of age, the relish of the saltness of time; it is this which is so delightfully asso- JL ciated with the old. The love for things of the past has in all ages exerted its appeal ; the fasci- nation of the old is perennial and imperishable. The attraction of the "fine last-century face" appealed to Charles Lamb, just as things of his own time appeal to us. Savage old Bajazet loved, in his moments of relaxation, to examine tapestry depicting ancient history. Generals, statesmen, artists, the average man and the average woman, all alike are suscepti- ble to the allurement of bygone days. And in no respect is a love for things of the past more justified than in the desire to possess stately and beautiful and charming furniture of the olden, long-past time. [4H] THE END OF IT ALL Stately and beautiful and charming in this lies the important point. The furniture which one is to gather should have grace or beauty or dignity, or all three. Age alone is always sufficient to arouse in- terest; but age alone is not enough to justify perma- nent possession. Naturally, the older a piece is, the less does it positively demand other attractions. Henry James has somewhere remarked that the very old can never look quite vulgar. Yet Methuselah pieces, notable for years alone and with no other justification for being, should be avoided. Gather things which it will be a restful delight to look upon. Gather, too, for use. Each article of furniture should be both charming and indispens- able. And, so far as possible, strive for harmony of effect. Let each piece be in the fit and proper place to add to the general impression. It is upon the heedful observance of points such as these; points which seem to be of self-evident im- portance but which are far too often unheeded; that the good appearance of a home depends. And do not overload. If you can properly use but a single sofa, do not get two, unless the second one is a rarer prize and you are to discard the first. For you are furnishing a home with furniture to live with; you are not filling a museum, to be walked [415] THE QUEST OF THE COLONIAL through with perfunctory stares. The attainment of sweetness, charm, propriety, proportion, ease, happiness that is what old furniture is for! We speak only as having attempted, as knowing that others can easily do all and more than all that we have done; but we speak out of an experi- ence which tells what happiness goes with old ma- hogany. And as we sit here, in front of our great fireplace, with the yellow light glowing gently through the shading trees and into our windows, thoughts come of our many adventures in quest of the quite Colo- nial. These rooms are very pleasant to walk through, very pleasant to live in ; and it is a delight to see and to use the graceful, charming old-furniture triumphs of the past with which we have furnished them. Old friends, old flowers, old furniture always the same delight and charm. It is not that we have had any unusual success as gatherers of the old; it is not that our specimens would be considered first prizes in the great collections. But that is precisely the point! We are not telling how to form the great collections. We are but telling how any one may go forth and, with perseverance and enthusiasm, find delightful old bits of mahogany and walnut and THE END OF IT ALL china and brass and bear them home 'in triumph. And into life there comes a new and delightful savor, with this smack of age and this relish of the saltness of time. 1417] INDEX Acanthus carving, 40, 178 Adam, a style in furniture, 39 Adaptations, American, 183 Advertisement in county pa- pers for furniture, 199 Andirons, brass, behind a fire- board, 406; with melting solder, 389; traded for a hammock, 16, 20; with wasps in them, 16, 308 iron, found in a cellar, 138; with faceted knobs, 316 Antiques, fashions in, 167 ; shops for, 142-147, 150, 152, 170, 230 Armoires, Dutch, 162 ; at an auction, 109; in Georgia, 130 Attics of old houses, 22, 125, 129, 404 Auctions, in the country, 100- 117; on Long Island, 141 Austrian, the old, 143 Bandboxes, old flowered, 129, 361 Bandy-leg, 256. See Cabriole Bandy-legged table from Maryland, 240 Banister-back chairs, 129, 131, 288, 295 Banisters, broken, 77 Banjo clocks, 212 Barn, contents of a Maryland, 236 Baskets, old makers of, 211 Beaufaits, bo-fats, buffets, 193, 367 Beds, four-poster, 125, 356, 357; Heppelwhite, 125; Wasl Washington's, 125, 360, 387 Beehive window, 58 Belleek, 170 Bellows for ten cents, in, 117 Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 298 Blennerhassett Island, 18 "Block-front" drawers, 217 Boathouse, 172 "Bonnet-top," 23, 94, 236; on Penn's desk, 397 Book-case, an Empire, 282 Boulle, 46, 234 Bowl and pitcher in blue, 361, 369 Brass, andirons. See And- irons candelabra from meeting- house, 306 candlesticks, first pair, 4, 5 ; fluted, from Delaware, 5, 200 ; in a pickle barrel, 196 fenders, 148, 346 handles, differences in, 225; oval, 113; rosette, 155, 242, 282; willow, 217 kettles, 3, 81, 162 knobs, 76 knockers, 76, 80, 151, 158, 160, 164 movements in clocks, 27 shovel and handle, 275 tips on carved feet, 43 tongs, 158 Broken-arch, 23, 94, 236, 397 Buff and white paint, 65 Burr, Aaron, 18, 62, 366, 367 Cabinet-makers, the great, 30- 34; the man from Mainz, 263 ; old and new in Mary- land, 230-244 Cabriole legs, 26, 29, 36, 69, 344 Candelabra from old meeting- house, 306 [419] INDEX v Candle-brackets, makeshift, 37i Candlesticks, first pair, 4, 5; fluted from Delaware, 5, 200; from navy, 5, 323; page of, 5; in a pickle barrel, 196; of Sheffield plate, 351 ; Sheffield plate, mended, 272 Canework, Empire, 41 ; seven- teenth century, 38, 69 Canopy on four-poster, 356 Canton china, at a sale, 106 ; in old house, 157 Cement for filling holes in wood, 272 Census of furniture in a vil- lage, 154 Chair-backs, 29, 32-45; Dutch, 69 Chairs, banister-back, 129, 131, 288, 295 Chippendale, the structure or design of, 26, 29, 32, 35, 344- 347; at a country auction, 1 06; in old house, 157; proportions of, 344; re- paired, 271 ; reproduced, 382 ; Anthony Wayne's, 344-348 Empire, 42-44 Heppelwhite, 35, 38; a fire- side, 256-262 rocking, 8, 21, 330 seventeenth century, 69 Shaker, 8, 21 Sheraton, 33-36 ; "Fancy," 109, 124; eight from Dela- ware, 199; Gothic, 349 slat-back, 97, 161, 288 Washington's, 45, 186 Windsor, 10, 129, 131, 220, 349; Declaration of In- dependence written in a, 45 ; extension-back, 267, 330; a favorite of George I, ts; in Great Britain, 267 ; masqueraded as mahogany, 390; page of, 267; in Philadelphia, 169; structure of, 349 ; thirty on Washington's piazza, 45 Chaise-longue, 193 Chandelier, "old, 85 Chest-on-chest, differentiated from high-boy, 171, 173; one from Massachusetts, 217 Chests, Dutch, inlaid and leather, 98 China, old, 299, 301 ; "sprigged," . 133 Chintz, 356 Chippendale as a cabinet- maker, 32 Chippendale, chairs. See Chairs. A fine table, 165; a secre- tary, 327; settee and double-chair, 205, 338; sofa, 338; a typical Chip- pendale leg, 26; his ideas on a valance, 127; on up- holstering, 347 Cibber, Colley, 67, 68 Claw-and-ball, 26, 39, 46 Claw-foot, when used, 26, 40; finding claw-foot sofas, 177, 180, 409, 412 Clocks, banjo, 212; Crom- well's, 396; Empire, 350; grandfather's, 95 ; unused in a garret, 22 ; on a wood- pile, 128; with wooden- works, 94, 95 Collections, historical, 47. 395,397 "Colonial," the meaning of the term, 14 Connecticut, furniture in, 203- 214; county fairs in, 214 Console, Empire, 303 Copper in Russian shops, 395 Corner-cupboards, found in Boston, 223; in old house, 48; in Maryland, 236, 246; in the South, 193 ; from Bethlehem, 299 [420] INDEX Cornice, a fine old design, 335 Couch-chairs, 193 Counterpanes made in Con- necticut, 211 Coverlets, blue, 136, 157; art of making, 202; used as hangings, 306 Crane, hanging a, 317 "Cunners," on the Eastern Shore, 247 Curtains, old way of hanging, 316 Dealers in antiques, the Aus- trian, 143 ; on Long Island, 147 ; in Maryland, 230 ; near the Kill van Kull, 150; upon the Delaware, 170; itinerant, 137, 151 Delaware, furniture in, 196-201 Dents, how to raise, 280 Designs in furniture, 30-46 Desks, Chippendale, 327 ; Sher- aton, 113; of William Penn, 396 Dials of clocks, 23 Dining-table, Sheraton, 303 ; a set of, 403 Dinner-wagons, 194 Double-chair, 193, 205 Dull surface in French polish- ing, 291 Dutch, as a term in furniture, 45, 46, 69 Dutch, armoire, 162 ; influence on chair-backs, 69, 106; origin of claw-and-ball feet, 46 ; marquetry, 391 ; old silver, 392; wardrobe, 159 Eagle, a national emblem, 24, 90 Eastern Shore, the, 227-250 Egg, the, as a design, 46 Egypt, its influence on furni- ture, 40 ; origin of sphinx and winged foot, 40 Empire, a classification in fur- niture, 40 Empire, book-case, 282; chairs, 41, 44; clock, 350; console, 383; mantel mirror, 333, 351; mirrors, 86, 87; side- boards, offered for new shelves, 135 ; in Maryland, 230-233; with mirror, 193; in village of furniture census, 158, 231 ; sofa, 177, 179, 338, 409, 412; typical winged-claw foot, 26 Fakes, how to recognize and avoid, 380-398 "Fancy" chairs of Sheraton, 109, 124 Farmington valley, empty houses in, 63 Fashions in antiques, 167 Fenders, brass, 148, 345 Firedogs, iron, 316. See And- irons Fireplace, bricking up of old, 75 ; of the inn, 68, 315-321 ; makeshift, 371-376; six- teen in one house, 61 Firescreen, old, 108, 170 Fireside chair bought as a wreck, 256-262 Flute, a, and its old player, 165 Four-poster, adapting a, 126- 127, 357-36o; finding a, 125 ; a sawed-down, 253 ; Washington's, 125, 360, 387 Franklins, 61, 74; in a bed- room, 363, 365 French, as a term in furniture, 45, 46 French polishing, 277-297 Furniture, American, 183; cen- sus in a village, 154-161 ; difference in North and South, 184; French, 46; hand-made, 12 ; imported, 183-185, 347 '[421] INDEX Garrets of old houses, 22, 125, 129, 404 Georgian, house, 60-62; silver by weight, 400 Germantown, old furniture in, 168 Ghosts in the old stone house, 52 Gilding an old mirror frame, 352 Griffin, in carving, 40 Guest room, the, 354-366 Hall, of inn, 59, 62, 82-85; brick-paved, eighteenth cen- tury, 409 Handles, brass, differences in, 225; oval, 113; rosette, 155, 242, 282; willow, 217 Hand-made coverlets, 306 ; furniture, 12; rugs, 82, 112 Harpsichord, 343 Heart-shaped chair-backs, 36, 38 Hearth, mending the, 72 Helmet coal-scuttle, 144 Heppelwhite as a cabinet- maker, 35, 344 Heppelwhite, bed, 125; chairs, 36, 38; fireside chair, 256- 262; chair in old house, 165; four-poster, 125, 356, 357; low-boy, 260, 270; sideboard, 197; in Mary- land, 228; tables, 91, 196, 197, 393 5 typical leg, 26 Heraldry, bucolic, 24 High-boy, 173, 181 ; from Con- necticut, 217; in a barn, 171 Houses, old, for rent, 118, 245, 248-250 Industries, cottage, 212-214 Inkstains, how to remove from wood, 293 ; as a supposed proof of age, 386 Inlay, 39, 46; modern, on old pieces, 240-243 Inn, the old, 58-80; in Mary- land, 246-247; at King's Mountain, 202 Irving, Washington, 65, 92 Jacobean, as a term in furni- ture, 40 Jefferson, his pictures, 91 ; wrote in a Windsor chair, 45 Kentucky, driving in, 134 Kettle, ebony-handled, 3 ; gipsy, 162 ; large brass, 162 Kettle-stand traded for a hen, 307, 393 Kitchen of inn. 68 Knife-boxes, 189 Knobs, brass, for door, 76 Knockers, brass, 76, 80, 151 ; in one village, 160; eagle, on old house door, 164; iron, from London, 98 Ladles, silver toddy, 129 Lafayette in western New York, 135 Lantern in hall, 164 Lion, in carving, 40 Long Island, clock from, 23; auctions on, 143; old dealer on, 144 Louis Quatorze, Quinze, and Seize, styles in furniture, 46 Low-boy, Heppelwhite, 201, 260, 270; of 1750, 383 Lowestoft, in a village cup- board, 159, 301 ; in a Massachusetts town, 219 Lustre, copper, pitcher, 194 Lye, action of, on wood, 293 Machine-made furniture, 47 Mahogany, 14; kinds of, 339; when first used, 40 ; weight of, 165 [422] INDEX Makeshifts, 370-379 Mantel, French idea of fur- nishing a, 350 Market, a Maryland, 229 Marquetry, Dutch, 391 Maryland, old furniture in, 227-251 Massachusetts, old furniture in, 214-224 Mirrors, Constitution, 90 ; Em- pire, 86, 87 ; Empire man- tel, 351 ; English and Ve- netian, 85 ; frame fitted to uprights, 274, 276 ; used as cupboard door, 140; with missing urn, 390 Misdating furniture, 387, 397 Miser of old furniture, 149 Moon, phases of the, 94 Music-stand, old, 165 Napoleon I, furniture of his time, 40, 41. Also see Empire Negroes, old furniture now owned by, 188 New Orleans, 193; silver shipped to, 401 New York, old furniture in, 141-166 Niagara Falls on old blue bowl and pitcher, 361 Oak, deceit in, 391 Ormolu, 43 Oval chair-backs, 36, 38 Ovens, old brick, 68 Pembroke tables, 44, 238, 244 Pendulums, first use of, 95, 96 ; introduction of long^ and short, 396 Pennsylvania, old furniture in, 176 Pewter, platter, 404; tankards, 321 Philadelphia, old furniture in, 167-176 Pictures, old-time, 91 ; how to hang, 333 Pilasters, fluted, 61, 82 Pineapple tops in carving, 40 Pitcher, a lustre, 194; pitcher and bowl in blue, 361 Polishing of wood, 277-297 Portico of inn, 58, 66; of old house, 118 Prints, of 1812, 133 ; in hall, 92 ; Napoleon, 92; behind oleo- graph, 407 Quaker home, 176 Queen Anne; a design of her period, 23 Quilts in patchwork at King's Mountain, 202 "Rays of the Sun," carved, 217 Rector with a handsaw, 203 Reeding on Sheraton legs, 26, 39 Rocking-chairs, 8, 21, 330 Rope, twisted, as a design, 40 ; on table, 237 Rugs, braided, fur, Oriental, of rag, woven, 82, 212, 365 Rush seats, 212, 296 Repairing Chippendale chair, 271 ; claw-and-ball table, 269 ; Heppelwhite chair, 256-262 ; Heppelwhite low- boy, 270; how to repair and polish at home, 277-297 Reproductions, frequent fail- ures in, 254 Salver, silver, in a cellar bin, 408 Samovars, 143 San Domingo mahogany, 339. See Mahogany 'Secretary, slant-top, 325, 327. See Desks Sets of dining tables, 160, 303, 309, 403 Settees, 157, 205, 338 '[423] INDEX Settle sawed up for memen- toes, 204 Seventeenth century furniture, 40, 69 Shakers, the, 4; chair from the, 8, 21 Sheffield plating, process of, Shell ornamentation, 35, 205, 224 Sheraton as a designer and cabinet-maker, 33, 36, 39 Sheraton chairs, 33, 36; "Fancy," 109, 124; from Delaware, 199; desk, 113; dining table, 303; sideboard, 35, 189, 191 ; sofa, 149 ; small oval table, 408; tea-board, 266, 314; typical leg, 26 Shield, as a design for chair- backs, 36, 38 Shops, antique ; the old Aus- trian's, 143 ; on Long Island, 147 ; in Maryland, 230; near the Kill van Kull, 150; on the Dela- ware, 170; "tea and an- tiques," 146, 152; "shabby shops," 143, 146 Shovel, brass, 275 Sideboards, Empire, 44; in Maryland, 230-233 ; with mirror, 193; Heppelwhite, 35, 3.6, 39; in Maryland, 228 ; in Virginia, 197 ; mis- use of Chippendale's name for, 35; origin of, 35; Sheraton, 35, 189, 193; taste for, 43 Sign-post of inn, 49, 58 Silver, Dutch, 392; Georgian, 400 Slat-back chairs, 97. 288, 295 Slats and splats differentiated, 278 Snake-foot, 26, 44, 343, 393 Sofa, Empire, 40-44, 157; find- ing claw-footed, 177-180, 338, 409, 412; a sawed- down, 128; Sheraton, 149 Solder in old andirons, 389 Spanish, as a term in furniture, .45, 46 Sphinx, as a design in furni- ture, 40; in brass, 350 Spinning-wheels, 55 Splats and slats differentiated, 278 Splats in Chippendale chairs, 32, 35, 344, 348; in Wind- sors, 267, 329; comparison of, 224 "Splint-bottom school of an- tiques," 134 Spoons, "rat-tail," 57 "Sprigged" china in farm- house, 133 Structure of old chair, 262 Styles in furniture, 29-42 Sun-dial, 331, 332 Tables, bandy-leg, 240-243 ; Chippendale, 165, 240, 242 ; dressing, 360, 378; Em- pire, 155, 237, 401 ; Heppel- white, 91, 196, 197, 393; page of little, 393; page of mahogany, 242 ; Pembroke, 44, 238, 244; repair of claw-and-ball, 269 ; Sher- aton dining, 303 ; small, oval, 408; in old house, 165 ; tilting or tipping, 238, 242 ; from a cabin, 188; tea, 343; "with claws and wings" from a janitor, 242, 401 ; tracing ancestral, 403 ; work, 155, 237, 242, 393 Tap-room of inn, 61, 73 "Tea and antiques," 146, 152 Tea-boards, 311, 314; repair of, 266; Franklin's letter about, 266 ; Wedgwood's use of , 31 1 Tempera on walls, 68 Tidewater inlets, 246 Toby, a, 322 [424] INDEX Tongs, brass, 158 Tortoise-shell inlay, 46 Trivets, 308 Tureen, silver, used as a lamp, 273 Twisted-rope carving, 40; on work-table, 237 Undertakers as old furniture dealers, 233, 412 Upholstering, on a Chippendale chair, 347; on a Heppel- white chair, 256-262 Upholstery, origin of, 224 Valance, Chippendale's ideas on, 127 Veneer, a chip in, 237; a prej- udice against, 234; polish- ing, 284 ; mending, 295 ; on pillars, 391 Village, a restful, 58; of furni- ture census, 154; one bought outright, 63 Virginia, old furniture in, 183- 196; ^ Heppelwhite furni- ture in, 197 "Wag-at-the-wall" clocks, 96 Wainscoting in old houses, 40, 157, 245, 250 Wall-paper, on bedroom, 365; for old houses, 76 ; making it stick on old walls, 72 ; on room in yellow, 336; restoring an old, 366 Warp, straightening a, in wood, 265 Washington, at an auction, 101 ; his bed, 125 ; in Con- necticut, 209 ; his chairs at Mt. Vernon, 186 ; his porch chairs, 45 Washstand to hold a bowl, 361 Wax, bleaching, in Connecticut, 213 Wayne, the chair of Anthony, 344-348 Weaving, at Mt. Vernon, 365; rag rugs, 112, 212 Web-foot, the, 26, 36, 181 Western Reserve, a garret in the, 22; clock unused, 23; high-boy in, 217 Whitewash, covering old, with paper, 72 Window, beehive, 58 Windsor chairs. See Chairs Wooden-works in clocks, 27-31 Worm-holes in old wood, 385 Wrecks, buying apparent, 252- 276 FOURTEEN DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. MAYS -195e.;. 30Nov f 86CB REC'D LD REC'D LD AUG 1 8 i&9 NOV 16 1956 . '-"- JUL 61961 NOV 18 1958 L IN STArKR LD OCT3 1964 JAN 11 1959 REC'D LD LD AUG 3 LD 21-100m-2,'55 (B139s22)476 General Library University of California Berkeley 7o? THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY