Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast

by Samuel Adams Drake

Though it is true there are few instances of the fatal straight line in Marblehead, those who are native there are far from appreciating the impression its narrow and crooked ways make on the stranger. They, at any rate, appeared to find their way without the difficulty I at first experienced. I asked one I met if I was in the right route to the dépôt. "Go straight ahead," was his injunction, a direction nothing but a round-shot from Fort Sewall could have followed. But I should add that Marblehead is not a labyrinth, any more than it is a field for missionary work: it has churches, banks, schools, a newspaper, and even a debating society; and it has thoroughfares that may be traversed without a guide.

The great man of Marblehead in the colonial day was Colonel Jeremiah Lee, whose still elegant mansion is to be seen there. Unlike many of the gentry of his time, Colonel Lee was a thorough-going patriot. He was, with Orne and Gerry, a delegate to the first and second Provincial Congresses of 1774. When the famous Revolutionary Committee of Safety and Supplies was formed, he became and continued a member until his death in May, 1775. Colonel Lee was with the committee on the day before the battle of Lexington, and with Gerry and Orne remained to pass the night at the Black Horse tavern in Menotomy, now Arlington. When the British advance reached this house it was surrounded, the half-dressed patriots having barely time to escape to a neighboring corn-field, where they threw themselves upon the ground until the search was over. From the exposure incident to this adventure Lee got his death. His townsmen treasure his memory as one of the men who formed the Revolution, braved its dangers, and accepted its responsibilities. Colonel Lee was a stanch churchman, which makes his adhesion to the patriot side the more remarkable.

LEE HOUSE.

There is nothing about the exterior of the Lee mansion to attract the stranger's attention, though it cost the colonel, when furnished, ten thousand pounds sterling. As was customary, its offices were on one side and its stables on the other, with a court-yard paved with beach-pebble, in which the date of the house, 1768,[160] may be traced. Entrance was gained on front and side over massive freestone steps, that show the print of time to have pressed more heavily than human feet. The house, long since deserted by the family, is now occupied as a bank.

On entering the mansion of the Lees the visitor is struck with the expansive area of the hall, which is six paces broad, and of corresponding depth. Age has imparted a rich coloring to the mahogany wainscot and casing of the staircase. The balusters are curiously carved in many different patterns; the walls are still hung with their original paper, in panels representing Roman or Grecian ruins, with trophies of arms, or implements of agriculture or of the chase between. One panel represented a sea-fight of Blake and Van Tromp's day. Some of them have been permanently disfigured by the use of the hall, at one time, as a fish-market. In a corner, a trap-door led to the old merchant's wine-cellar, which he thus kept under his own eye. It was after a visit to some such mansion that Daniel Webster asked, "Did those old fellows go to bed in a coach-and-four?"

The rooms opening at the right and left of the hall are worthy of it, especially the first named, which is wainscoted from floor to ceiling, and enriched with elaborate carving. Over the fire-place of this room was formerly a portrait of Esther before Ahasuerus, beautifully painted on a panel. There is an upper hall of ample size, from which open sleeping apartments with pictured tiles, recessed windows, and panes that were the wonder of the town, in which none so large had been seen.

Would I had been here when the old colonel's slaves kept the antique brasses brightly polished, and stout logs crackled and snapped in the fire-places, in the day of coffin-clocks, French mirrors, and massive old plate, when the bowl of arrack-punch stood on the sideboard, and Copley's portraits of master and mistress graced the walls.[161] The painter has introduced the colonel in a brown velvet coat laced with gold, and full-bottomed wig. He was short in stature and rather portly, with an open face, thin nostril, and fine, intelligent eye. The head is slightly thrown back, a device of the artist to add height to the figure. Madam Lee is in a satin over-dress, with a pelisse of ermine negligently cast about her bare shoulders. She looks a stately dame, with her black eyes and self-possessed air, or as if she might have kept the colonel's house, slaves included, in perfect order.[162]

When General Washington was making his triumphal tour of the Eastern States, in 1789, he came to Marblehead. It was, he says, "four miles out of the way; but I wanted to see it." And so he turned aside to ride through its rocky lanes, and look into the faces of the men who had followed him from Cambridge to Trenton, and from Trenton to Yorktown. How the sight of their chief must have warmed the hearts of those veterans! He jotted down in his diary very briefly what he saw and heard in Marblehead: "About 5000 souls are said to be in this place, which has the appearance of antiquity; the houses are old; the streets dirty; and the common people not very clean. Before we entered the town we were met and attended by a com'e, till we were handed over to the Selectmen, who conducted us, saluted by artillery, into the town to the house of a Mrs. Lee, where there was a cold collation prepared; after partaking of which, we visited the harbor, etc." Lafayette, Monroe, and Jackson have been entertained in the same house.