"A Peep at the Moon" comes from Nantucket. It reveals fully as much as our life-long students of that dead planet have been able to show us, and the inhabitants are as probable as any described as existing on Mars. At Duxbury, Massachusetts, there are still two much-talked-of papers, in what is called the "Weston House"—now occupied by the Powder Point School. Mrs. Ezra Weston was a Bradford, and the story is that this paper was brought from Paris by her brother, Captain Gershom Bradford. There is a continuous scene around the room, apparently from the environs of Paris. Upstairs, a small room is papered with the remains of the "Pizarro" paper, which was formerly in the sitting-room opposite the parlor. This has tropical settings and shows the same characters in more or less distinct scenes about the wall. The paper was so strong that it was taken off the sitting-room in complete strips and is now on a small upper chamber.
A stranger, who had heard of my collection, sent a beautiful photograph with this glowing description:
"This wall-paper looks Oriental; it is gilt. Arabs are leading camels, while horses are prancing proudly with their masters in the saddle as the crescent moon is fast sinking to rest in a cloudless sky. Fountains are playing outside of the portal entrance to a building of Saracenic architecture, a quiet, restful scene, decidedly rich and impressive."
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, in his Story of a Bad Boy, describes his grandfather's old home—the Nutter House at Rivermouth, he calls it, but he doubtless has in mind some house at Portsmouth, his birthplace.
"On each side of the hall are doors (whose knobs, it must be confessed, do not turn very easily), opening into large rooms wainscoted and rich in wood-carvings about the mantel-pieces and cornices. The walls are covered with pictured paper, representing landscapes and sea-views. In the parlor, for example, this enlivening group is repeated all over the room:—A group of English peasants, wearing Italian hats, are dancing on a lawn that abruptly resolves itself into a sea-beach, upon which stands a flabby fisherman (nationality unknown), quietly hauling in what appears to be a small whale, and totally regardless of the dreadful naval combat going on just beyond the end of his fishing-rod. On the other side of the ships is the main-land again, with the same peasants dancing. Our ancestors were very worthy people, but their wall-papers were abominable."
With the paper on the little hall chamber which was the Bad Boy's own, he was quite satisfied, as any healthy-minded boy should have been:
"I had never had a chamber all to myself before, and this one, about twice the size of our state-room on board the Typhoon, was a marvel of neatness and comfort. Pretty chintz curtains hung at the window, and a patch quilt of more colors than were in Joseph's coat covered the little truckle-bed. The pattern of the wall-paper left nothing to be desired in that line. On a gray background were small bunches of leaves, unlike any that ever grew in this world; and on every other bunch perched a yellow-bird, pitted with crimson spots, as if it had just recovered from a severe attack of the small-pox. That no such bird ever existed did not detract from my admiration of each one. There were two hundred and sixty-eight of these birds in all, not counting those split in two where the paper was badly joined. I counted them once when I was laid up with a fine black eye, and falling asleep immediately dreamed that the whole flock suddenly took wing and flew out of the window. From that time I was never able to regard them as merely inanimate objects."
One of the most spirited papers I have seen is a series of horse-racing scenes which once adorned the walls of the eccentric Timothy Dexter. Fragments of this paper are still preserved, framed, by Mr. T. E. Proctor of Topsfield, Mass. The drawing makes up in spirit what it lacks in accuracy, and the coloring leaves nothing to the imagination. The grass and sky are as green and blue as grass and sky can be, and the jockeys' colors could be distinguished from the most distant grand-stand.
This paper is a memento of the remarkable house of a remarkable man—Timothy Dexter, an eighteenth century leather merchant of Massachusetts, whose earnings, invested through advice conveyed to him in dreams, brought him a fortune. With this he was able to gratify his unique tastes in material luxuries. His house at Newburyport was filled with preposterous French furniture and second-rate paintings. On the roof were minarets decorated with a profusion of gold balls. In front of the house he placed rows of columns, some fifteen feet in height, surmounted by heroic wooden figures of famous men. As his taste in great men changed he would have the attire and features of some statue modified, so that General Morgan might one day find himself posing as Bonaparte. On a Roman circle before the entrance stood his permanent hero, Washington, supported on the left by Jefferson, on the right by Adams, who was obliged to stand uncovered in all weathers, to suit Timothy's ideas of the respect due to General Washington. Four roaring wooden lions guarded this Pantheon, and the figures were still standing when the great gale of 1815 visited Newburyport. Then the majority fell. The rest were sold for a song, and were scattered, serving as weather vanes and tavern signs.
Timothy Dexter wrote one book, which is now deservedly rare. This was A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, of which he published at least two editions. In this book he spoke his mind on all subjects; his biographer, Samuel L. Knapp, calls it "a Galamathus of all the saws, shreds, and patches that ever entered the head of a motley fool, with items of his own history and family difficulties." His vanity, literary style and orthography may be seen in his assertion: "Ime the first Lord in the Younited States of Amercary, now of Newburyport. It is the voice of the peopel and I cant Help it." To the second edition of his Pickle he appended this paragraph: "Mister Printer the knowing ones complane of my book the first edition had no stops I put in A Nuf here and they may peper and solt it as they plese." A collection of quotation marks, or "stops" followed.