The Sally came to Wiscasset, Maine, and the story told “down East” is that there was a plot to rescue Marie Antoinette, and the Sally was laden for that purpose; and that a house had been built in a Maine seaport for the queen, whose execution put an end to the plot, and sent the Sally off to America with her rich cargo. I cannot help thinking that if the story be true, Marie Antoinette was spared many weary days of discontent and homesickness; for the temperament of the unfortunate queen, luxury loving, gay, and heedless, does not fit into the life of a little Maine seaport town one hundred years ago. When the Sally arrived, her cargo of beautiful things was sold. Legends of Marie Antoinette furniture crop up all around the towns in the neighborhood of Wiscasset, but, singularly enough, I have been unable to trace a single piece in Maine except this sideboard. Miss Elizabeth Bartol of Boston, whose mother was a granddaughter of Colonel Swan, owns several pieces. Colonel Swan’s son married the daughter of General Knox and took the sideboard with him to General Knox’s home in Thomaston, Maine, where it remained for many years.
The sideboard is made of oak (showing its English origin) veneered with mahogany. The lines upon the front and the figures upon the legs are inlaid in satinwood, and the knife-box is inlaid in the same wood. The top of the sideboard is elaborately inlaid with satinwood and dark mahogany, in wide bands, separated by lines of ebony and satinwood, and crossed by fine satinwood lines radiating from the centre. The handles and escutcheons are of silver, and the top of the knife-box is covered by a silver tray with a reticulated railing. The coffee-urn is of Sheffield plate, and the sideboard with its appurtenances appears to-day as it did one hundred years ago in the house of General Knox. It is now owned by the Hon. James Phinney Baxter of Portland, Maine.
Illus. 76.—Urn-shaped
Knife-box, 1790.
Knife-boxes were made of different shapes, to hold knives, forks, and spoons, and a pair of knife-boxes was the usual accompaniment to a handsome sideboard. The most skilled cabinet-makers were employed in their manufacture, as each curved section had to be fitted most carefully.
Illustration [76] shows an urn-shaped knife-box of mahogany inlaid in lines of holly. The interior of the box is fitted with circular trays of different heights, and through the little openings in these trays the knives and spoons were suspended.
Illus. 77.—Urn-shaped
Knife-box, 1790.
Illustration [77] shows an urn-shaped knife-box opened. The top rests upon a wooden rod which extends through the middle of the box, and instead of turning back with a hinge, the top slides up on this rod, and when it is raised to a certain height it releases a spring which holds the rod firmly in its place. This urn knife-box is in the Pendleton collection in Providence, Rhode Island.