“I was introduced to LaFayette twice and shook hands with him three times. Ann Chew regretted M. was not there to enjoy the scene—it was quite delightful to see anything so animated in G—pp. There was so much noise that I could not hear a word the General said; every person seemed so anxious to see him eat that a centinal had to keep guard at the door with a drawn sword—it was very fine indeed. When he departed the shouts of the multitude and the roaring of the cannon was almost deafening. A. L. Logan said I could give you a very fine description of it—but I told him I would have to leave it to your imagination, it would be impossible for me to describe everything.”
Mrs. Samuel Chew is the present owner of the estate, and an appreciative custodian of its legend. Hers are the Washington letters; the portraits of illustrious Chews who have been eminent in the law, medicine, and public affairs since John Chew sailed into Jamestown in the Charitie in 1621; the shot-holes, the stains of the powder-kegs on the floor; the immaculately carved columns and stair rail of the hallway, and the hundred other fragments of the Cliveden story. Cliveden is hers—its story is the nation’s.
The Wentworth Mansion
© D.McK
THE WENTWORTH MANSION
I like to think of the house as a family group of all the Wentworths, each little excrescence on the original nucleus being one of the useful but obscure members posed kneeling or sitting on the outskirts of the family as it pyramids up to the bulk of the council-room Benning Wentworth built, the council-room being in my mind’s eye none other than the formidable, homely, well-fed and hard-drinking Benning himself.
The Wentworth Mansion
“These tales you tell are one and all
Of the Old World,” the Poet said,