HOPPIN HOUSE FROM THE CLOSE. RAREVIEW, LITCHFIELD.
story are paneled in wood from floor to ceiling, and the panels are beveled flush panels—the most expensive kind.
Here is a wonderful old house intensely affecting to stand and contemplate. It seems to be sinking into the earth, as many old houses in England have the appearance of doing, and possesses a tone like a Stradivarius violin, which cannot be counterfeited. The day in the summer of 1896, when I spent a delightful hour in its company, was a sort of reception day, I remember. There were many summer visitors calling, and they “de-ared” it and gushed over it as society people gush over a Chopin étude, because they think it proper to do so, without appreciating the subtle sentiment of the thing at all. It is not so much an affair of one’s education as it is an affair of the heart. People must have the right kind of a heart and the right kind of a charitable nature before they may really enjoy either a Chopin étude or the McPhædris house at Portsmouth. To quote the lines of Holofernes in “Love’s Labor’s Lost”: They
“Find not the apostrophes, and so miss the accent.”
While Portsmouth is on the main line of travel north from Boston, it is still almost as much neglected as Annapolis, and it is a great pity that many of its once splendid mansions are falling into decay. The Governor Langdon house, the Ladd house and others should receive the attention they bestow upon such priceless relics in Salem, where everything of the kind is jealously guarded. But Salem is so distinctly illustrative of early nineteenth century work that I intend to refer to it later, under that head, likewise to Providence and Bristol, in Rhode Island, and Middletown, in Connecticut.
New York and Boston have practically nothing left of the grand epoch. The Walton house of Pearl Street and the Hancock house of Beacon Street, respectively, with all their less noted colleagues, have passed into history, the Walton house (i.e., in its original splendor) before the advent of photography; so that we have not even pictures of it of any value. The Jumel mansion (A.D. 1758) perched upon a dizzy height overlooking the Harlem, is a sole survivor intact whose permanency is threatened at the time I write.
HOUSE OF CAPTAIN McPHAEDRIS, AT PORTSMOUTH N. H.