Certain towns and their neighborhoods are particularly rich in interesting old papers, and Salem, Massachusetts, certainly deserves honorable mention at the head of the list. That place can show more than a score of very old papers in perfect condition to-day, and several houses have modern paper on the walls that was copied from the original paper.
One old house there was formerly owned by a retired merchant, and he had the entire ceiling of the large cupola painted to show his wharves and his ships that sailed from this port for foreign lands.
Another fine house has a water color painting on the walls, done to look like paper; this is one hundred and seventy-five years old.
A curious paper is supposed to be an attempt to honor the first railroad. This is in bright colors, with lower panels in common gray tints. The friend who obtained this for me suggests that the artist did not know how to draw a train of cars, and so filled up the space ingeniously with a big bowlder. This is on the walls of a modest little house, and one wonders that an expensive landscape paper should be on the room. But the owner of the house was an expressman and was long employed by Salemites to carry valuable bundles back and forth from Boston. A wealthy man who resided in Chestnut Street was having his house papered during the rage for landscape papers, and this person carried the papers down from Boston so carefully that the gentleman presented him with a landscape paper of his own, as a reward for his interest. Now the mansion has long since parted with its foreign landscapes, but such care was taken of the humble parlor that its paper is still intact and handsome; it is more than seventy-five years old.
A fine French paper shows a fruit garden, probably the Tuileries, in grays and blues. The frieze at the top is of white flowers in arches with blue sky between the arches. This room was papered for Mrs. Story, the mother of Judge Story, in 1818.
In the Osgood house in Essex Street there is a most beautiful paper, imported from Antwerp in the early part of the nineteenth century, depicting a hunting scene. The hunt is centered about the hall and the game is run down and slain in the last sheet. A balustrade is at the foot of the picture. The color is brown sepia shades.
One neat little house, in an out-of-the-way corner in Marblehead, has a French paper in gray, white and black, which was brought from France by a Marblehead man who was captured by a French privateer and lived in France many years. When he returned, he brought this with him. It shows scenes in the life of the French soldiers. They are drinking at inns, flirting with pretty girls, but never fighting. Another paper has tropical plants, elephants, natives adorned with little else but feathers and beads. The careful mother will not allow any of the children to go alone into this room for fear they may injure it.
In a Chinese paper, one piece represents a funeral, and the horse with its trappings is being led along without a rider; women and children are gazing at the procession from pagodas.
On the walls of the Johnson house in North Andover is a Marie Antoinette paper, imported from England. I have heard of only this one example of this subject. A number of homes had painted walls, with pictures that imitated the imported landscapes.
At the Art Museum, Boston, one may see many specimens of old paper brought to this country before 1820, and up to 1860. A spirited scene is deer stalking in the Scotch Highlands; the deer is seen in the distance, one sportsman on his knees taking aim, another holding back an excited dog. In another hunting paper, the riders are leaping fences. A pretty Italian paper has peasants dancing and gathering grapes; vines are trained over a pergola, and a border of purple grapes and green leaves surrounds each section of the paper. A curious one is "Little Inns," with signs over the doors, as "Good Ale sold here," or "Traveler's Rest"; all are dancing or drinking, the colors are gay. There are also specimens of fireboards, for which special patterns were made, usually quite ornate and striking.