My feelings may well be imagined during this trying time. Since there were several things which I still wished to remove from the Whipplefish house, my anxiety over his condition was naturally tremendous. It affected me to such an extent that my hand slipped on one occasion when I was mixing a batch of gin, and I got in twice as much essence as I should. I was forced to throw away an entire quart of alcohol.
Eventually Mr. Whipplefish finished the six bottles without succumbing; and after allowing him several days in which to recover, I returned to the chase. He was, of course, very glad to see me, and did not demur at all when I gave him two bottles and removed the big brick fireplace with its quaint brick oven from the kitchen. I could easily get five hundred dollars for this fireplace if I wished to take the money; but I put Art above Commercialism, like every true lover of the Beautiful. I shall always keep this quaint and hospitable hearth, unless somebody offers me so much money that I cannot refuse.
My final purchase from Mr. Whipplefish and the celebrated old Whipplefish house was made on July 14th. I remember the day very well, for it is the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. Hereafter the date will always be associated in my mind with two falls.
Early on the morning of that day I called on Mr. Whipplefish and found him shaking all over. His first question was, “Got any gin?” I at once realized that the time was ripe to get the magnificent hand-hewn oak beams in the kitchen—beautiful things that I had coveted ever since I started coming to the house. Mr. Whipplefish was wholly reckless at that time, and insisted on a higher price than I cared to pay; but the beams were such rare and delightful pieces that I threw caution to the winds. Mr. Whipplefish, with his Yankee cunning gleaming in his little blue eyes, insisted on an entire case of gin in return for these beams.
And I—I paid it. It may have been foolish of me to do so; but the lure of the antique, which no true collector can resist, led me on. I gave him the case for which he asked. Then I took out the beams.
As I was loading them on the team to take them away, kindly old Mr. Whipplefish stood in the doorway of the historic old Whipplefish house, waving a partly empty bottle around his head and crooning an old Cape Cod melody to me by way of farewell. Unfortunately, in the middle of the song, the bottle struck the side of the doorway. The house, weakened by the many removals, at once collapsed, burying Mr. Whipplefish in the remains.
July is the busy season on Cape Cod; and since it was supposed that Mr. Whipplefish had been killed, no effort was made to dig him out on that day. On the following morning, however, he was heard crying for more gin; so a number of natives rather reluctantly desisted from their regular summer occupation of relieving the summer visitor of his bank-roll, and dug him out. He was little the worse for wear, for he had shielded the partly filled gin bottle with his body as the house caved in on him, and the stimulant had eased the trying hours.
This, however, was not the end of the old Whipplefish house. A few months after the collapse a retired harness manufacturer from Rochester, New York, who was travelling on Cape Cod in search of the antique and the quaint, passed the ruins of the old Elon D. Whipplefish house, lying amidst the pine trees, poplars, stinkbush and cranberries.
As I have said before, persistence is at the root of all successful antiqueing. W——, the retired harness manufacturer, for some unknown reason made up his mind that he wished to restore the Elon D. Whipplefish house to the exact state in which it was before its collapse.
Plate V