Transcriber's Note:

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Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been adjusted, and obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For a complete list, please see the end of this book.

WE HAVE PRINTED 75 SIGNED AND NUMBERED COPIES OF THIS BOOK ON FRENCH JAPAN PAPER, AND 975 NUMBERED COPIES ON AMERICAN PLATE PAPER. THE TYPE HAS BEEN DISTRIBUTED. NUMBER.

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Old Time Wall Papers

AN ACCOUNT OF THE PICTORIAL PAPERS
ON OUR FOREFATHERS' WALLS

WITH A STUDY OF THE

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF WALL
PAPER MAKING AND DECORATION

BY

KATE SANBORN

GREENWICH CONNECTICUT
THE LITERARY COLLECTOR PRESS
NEW YORK
1905

Clifford & Lawton
19 Union Square West, New York City
SOLE AGENTS

Copyright, 1905
BY KATE SANBORN

TO
A. S. C.
THE CHATELAINE OF ELM BANK

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

IF a book has ever been written on this subject it has been impossible to discover; and to get reliable facts for a history of the origin and development of the art of making wall-papers has been a serious task, although the result seems scanty and superficial. Some friends may wonder at the lack of fascinating bits of gossip, stories of rosy romance and somber tragedy in connection with these papers. But those who chatted, danced, flirted, wept or plotted in the old rooms are long since dust, and although the "very walls have ears" they have not the gift of speech. But my collection of photographs is something entirely unique and will increase in value every year. The numerous photographers, to whom I have never appealed in vain, are regarded by me as not only a skillful but a saintly class of men.

I am greatly indebted to Miss Mary M. Brooks of Salem and Miss Mary H. Buckingham of Boston for professional assistance. Many others have most kindly helped me by offers of photographs and interesting facts concerning the papers and their histories. But I am especially indebted to Mrs. Frederick C. Bursch, who has given much of her time to patient research, to the verification or correction of doubtful statements, and has accomplished a difficult task in arranging and describing the photographs. Without her enthusiastic and skillful assistance, my collection and text would have lacked method and finish.

To the many, both acquaintances and strangers, who have volunteered assistance and have encouraged when discouragement was imminent, sending bracing letters and new-old pictures, I can only quote with heartfelt thanks the closing lines of the verse written by Foote, the English actor, to be posted conspicuously to attract an audience to his benefit—

Like a grate full of coals I'll glow
A great full house to see;
And if I am not grateful, too,
A great fool I shall be.

CONTENTS

[I]Page

FROM MUD WALLS AND CANVAS TENTS TO DECORATIVE PAPERS [ 1]

[II]

PROGRESS AND IMPROVEMENT IN THE ART [23]

[III]

EARLIEST WALL PAPERS IN AMERICA [41]

[IV]

WALL PAPERS IN HISTORIC HOMES [61]

[V]

NOTES FROM HERE AND THERE [85]

[VI]

REVIVAL AND RESTORATION OF OLD WALL PAPERS [103]

LIST OF PLATES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Plates

Illustrations.

I

FROM MUD WALLS AND CANVAS TENTS TO DECORATIVE PAPERS

"HOW very interesting! Most attractive and quite unique! I supposed all such old papers had gone long ago. How did you happen to think of such an odd subject, and how ever could you find so many fine old specimens? Do you know where the very first wall-paper was made?"

These are faint echoes of the questions suggested by my collection of photographs of wall-papers of the past. The last inquiry, which I was unable to answer, stimulated me to study, that I might learn something definite as to the origin and development of the art of making such papers.

Before this, when fancying I had found a really new theme, I was surprised to discover that every one, from Plato and Socrates to Emerson, Ruskin and Spencer, had carefully gleaned over the same ground, until the amount of material became immense and unmanageable. Not so now. I appealed in vain to several public libraries; they had nothing at all on the subject. Poole's Index—that precious store-house of information—was consulted, but not one magazine article on my theme could be found. I then sent to France, England and Italy, and employed professional lookers-up of difficult topics; but little could be secured. The few who had studied paper hangings were very seldom confident as to positive dates and facts.

One would seem safe in starting with China, as paper was certainly invented there, and many of the earliest designs were of Chinese scenes; but the honor is also claimed for Japan and Persia and Egypt. It is difficult to decide in view of the varying testimony.

I was assured by a Japanese expert, who consulted a friend for the facts, that neither the Chinese nor the Japanese have ever used paper to cover their walls. At the present day, the inner walls of their houses are plastered white, and usually have a strip of white paper running around the bottom, about a foot and a half high.

On the other hand, Clarence Cook, in his book, What Shall We Do With Our Walls?, published in 1880, says as to the origin of wall-paper: "It may have been one of the many inventions borrowed from the East, and might be traced, like the introduction of porcelain, to the Dutch trade with China and Japan." And he finds that the Japanese made great use of paper, their walls being lined with this material, and the divisions between the rooms made largely, if not entirely, by means of screens covered with paper or silk. Japanese wall-paper does not come in rolls like ours, but in pieces, a little longer than broad, and of different sizes. He adds:

PLATE II.

One of the cruder papers popular a hundred years ago; containing three groups of figures engaged in rural occupations. Beside the gray ground this paper contains eleven shades of color, roughly applied, with little attention paid to register.

"What makes it more probable that our first European notion of wall-papers came from Japan, is the fact that the first papers made in Holland and then introduced into England and France, were printed in these small sizes [about three feet long by fifteen inches wide]. Nor was it until some time in the eighteenth century that the present mode of making long rolls was adopted. These early wall-papers were printed from blocks, and were only one of many modifications and adaptations of the block printing which gave us our first books and our first wood-cuts.

"The printing of papers for covering walls is said to have been introduced into Spain and Holland about the middle of the sixteenth century. And I have read, somewhere, that this mode of printing the patterns on small pieces of paper was an imitation of the Spanish squares of stamped and painted leather with which the grandees of Spain covered their walls, a fashion that spread all over Europe.

"We are told that wall-paper was first used in Europe as a substitute for the tapestry so commonly employed in the middle ages, partly as a protection against the cold and damp of the stone walls of the houses, partly, no doubt, as an ornament."

But here is something delightfully positive from A. Blanchet's Essai sur L'Histoire du Papier et de sa Fabrication, Exposition retrospective de la Papetier, Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1900.

Blanchet says that paper was invented in China by Tsai Loon, for purposes of writing. He used fibres of bark, hemp, rags, etc. In 105 A. D. he reported to the government on his process, which was highly approved. He was given the honorary title of Marquis and other honors. The first paper book was brought to Japan from Corea, then a part of China, in 285. The conquest of Turkestan by the Arabs, through which they learned the manufacture of paper, came in the battle fought on the banks of the River Tharaz, in July, 751. Chinese captives brought the art to Samarcand, from which place it spread rapidly to other parts of the Arabian Empire. Damascus was one of the first places to receive it. In Egypt, paper began to take the place of papyrus in the ninth century, and papyrus ceased to be used in the tenth. The Arabian paper was made of rags, chiefly linen, and sized with wheat starch. European paper of the thirteenth century shows, under the microscope, fibres of flax and hemp, with traces of cotton. About 1400, animal glue was first used for sizing. The common belief that Arabian and early European paper was made of cotton is a mistake. There has never been any paper made of raw cotton, and cotton paper anywhere is exceptional. In 1145, when the troops of Abd el Mounin were about to attack the capital of Fez, the inhabitants covered the vault of the mihrab of the mosque with paper, and put upon this a coating of plaster, in order to preserve from destruction the fine carvings which are still the admiration of visitors. The mihrab of an Arabic mosque is a vaulted niche or alcove, in which the altar stands and towards which the worshippers look while they pray. This is probably the earliest approach to the use of wall-paper and shows the excellent quality of the paper.

Herbert Spencer states that "Dolls, blue-books, paper-hangings are lineally descended from the rude sculpture paintings in which the Egyptians represented the triumphs and worship of their god-kings." No doubt this is true, but the beginning of paper, and probably of wall-paper, was in China.

Paper made of cotton and other vegetable fibres by the Chinese was obtained by the Arabs in trade, through Samarcand. When they captured that city, in 704 A.D. they learned the process from Chinese captives there, and soon spread it over their empire. It was known as "Charta Damascena" in the Middle Ages, and was extensively made also in Northern Africa. The first paper made in Europe was manufactured by the Moors in Spain, at Valencia, Toledo, and Xativa. At the decline of Moorish power, the Christians took it up, but their work was not so good. It was introduced into Italy through the Arabs in Sicily; and the Laws of Alphonso, 1263, refer to it as "cloth parchment." The earliest documents on this thick "cotton" paper date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as a deed of King Roger of Sicily, dated 1102, shows. When made further north, other materials, such as rags and flax, were used. The first mention of rag paper, in a tract of Peter, Abbott of Cluny from 1122 to 1150, probably means woolen. Linen paper was not made until in the fourteenth century.

The Oriental papers had no water mark,—which is really a wire mark. Water-mark paper originated in the early fourteenth century, when paper-making became an European industry; and a considerable international trade can be traced by means of the water marks.

The French Encyclopædia corroborates Blanchet's statement that the common notion that the Arabic and early European papers were made of cotton is a mistake; the microscope shows rag and flax fibres in the earliest.

Frederic Aumonier says: "From the earliest times man has longed to conceal the baldness of mud walls, canvas tents or more substantial dwellings, by something of a decorative character. Skins of animals, the trophies of the chase, were probably used by our remote ancestors for ages before wall-paintings and sculptures were thought of. The extreme antiquity of both of these latter methods of wall decoration has recently received abundant confirmation from the valuable work done by the Egyptian Research Department, at Hierakonopolis, where wall-paintings have been discovered in an ancient tomb, the date of which has not yet been determined, but which is probably less than seven thousand years old; and by the discovery of ancient buildings under the scorching sand dunes of the great Sahara, far away from the present boundary line of habitable and cultivated land. The painted decorations on the walls of some of the rooms in these old-world dwellings have been preserved by the dry sand, and remain almost as fresh as they were on the day they left the hand of the artist, whose bones have long since been resolved into their native dust."

From the Encyclopædia Britannica I condense the long article on "Mural Decoration":

There is scarcely one of the numerous branches of decorative art which has not at some time or other been applied to the ornamentation of wall-surfaces.

I. Reliefs sculptured in marble or stone; the oldest method of wall decoration.

II. Marble veneer; the application of thin marble linings to wall surfaces, these linings often being highly variegated.

III. Wall linings of glazed bricks or tiles. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Moslems of Persia brought their art to great perfection and used it on a large scale, chiefly for interiors. In the most beautiful specimens, the natural growth of trees and flowers is imitated. About 1600 A. D., this art was brought to highest perfection.

IV. Wall coverings of hard stucco, frequently enriched with relief and further decorated with delicate paintings in gold and colors, as at the Alhambra at Granada and the Alcazar at Seville.

V. Sgraffito; a variety of stucco work used chiefly in Italy, from the sixteenth century down. A coat of stucco is made black by admixture of charcoal. Over this a second very thin coat of white stucco is laid. The drawing is made to appear in black on a white ground, by cutting away the white skin enough to show the black undercoat.

VI. Stamped leather; magnificent and expensive, used during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in Italy, Spain, France, and later in England.

VII. Painted cloth. In King Henry IV., Falstaff says his soldiers are "slaves, as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth." Canvas, painted to imitate tapestry, was used both for ecclesiastical and domestic hangings. English mediæval inventories contain such items as "stayned cloth for hangings"; "paynted cloth with stories and batailes"; and "paynted cloths of beyond-sea-work." The most important existing example is the series of paintings of the Triumph of Julius Caesar, now in Hampton Court. These designs were not meant to be executed in tapestry, but were complete as wall-hangings. Godon, in Peinture sur Toile, says: "The painted canvasses kept at the Hôtel Dieu at Rheims were done in the fifteenth century, probably as models for woven tapestries. They have great artistic merit. The subjects are religious." Painted cloths were sometimes dyed in a manner similar to those Indian stuffs which were afterwards printed and are now called chintzes. It is recorded somewhere, that the weaving industry was established at Mulhouse (Rixheim) by workers who left Rheims at a time when laws were passed there to restrict the manufacture of painted cloths, because there was such a rage for it that agriculture and other necessary arts were neglected.

VIII. Printed hangings and wall-papers. The printing of various textiles with dye-colors and mordaunts is probably one of the most ancient of the arts. Pliny describes a dyeing process employed by the ancient Egyptians, in which the pattern was probably formed by printing from blocks. The use of printed stuffs is of great antiquity among the Hindus and Chinese, and was practised in Western Europe in the thirteenth century, and perhaps earlier. The South Kensington Museum has thirteenth-century specimens of block-printed linen made in Sicily, with beautiful designs. Later, toward the end of the fourteenth century, a great deal of block-printed linen was made in Flanders and was imported largely into England.

Tapestries as wall-hangings were used in the earliest times, and, as tiles and papers were copied from them, they must be spoken of here. One remarkable example of tapestry from a tomb in the Crimea is supposed by Stephani to date from the fourth century before Christ. Homer frequently describes tapestry hangings, as when he alludes to the cloth of purple wool with a hunting scene in gold thread, woven by Penelope for Ulysses. Plutarch, in his Life of Themistocles, says, "Speech is like cloth of Arras, opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs."

The oldest tapestry now in existence is the set of pieces known as the Bayeux Tapestry, preserved in the library at Bayeux, near Caen, in France, and said to be the work of Matilda, Queen of William the Conqueror. These pieces measure two hundred and thirty-one feet long and twenty inches wide.

It is generally believed, and stated as a fact in the various guide-books, that the Bayeux Tapestry was the work of Queen Matilda, the consort of the Conqueror, assisted by her ladies. At that time, English ladies were renowned for their taste and skill in embroidery. Their work was known throughout Europe as English work. The Conquest having brought the people of Normandy and England into close intercourse, it is pointed out that on William's return to France, he must have taken with him many Saxons, with their wives and daughters, in honorable attendance upon him; and that these ladies might have helped Matilda and her companions in making this historical piece of needlework. Many historians, however, incline to the opinion that Matilda and her ladies had nothing to do with the tapestry, although it was done during her lifetime.

It is amusing to note how Miss Strickland, in her Lives of the Queens of England, takes up the cudgels in a very vigorous manner on behalf of Matilda's claim:

"The archæologists and antiquaries would do well to direct their intellectual powers to more masculine objects of enquiry, and leave the question of the Bayeux Tapestry (with all other matters allied to needle-craft) to the decision of the ladies, to whose province it belongs. It is a matter of doubt whether one out of the many gentlemen who have disputed Matilda's claim to that work, if called upon to execute a copy of either of the figures on canvas, would know how to put in the first stitch."

But Dr. Daniel Rock, in his exhaustive work on Tapestries, casts the gravest doubts upon the tradition that this needlework owed its origin to Matilda and her ladies: "Had such a piece anywise or ever belonged to William's wife, we must think that, instead of being let stray away to Bayeux, toward which place she bore no particular affection, she would have bequeathed it, like other things, to her beloved church at Caen."

The author points out that there is no mention of the tapestry in the Queen's will, while two specimens of English needlework, a chasuble and a vestment, are left to the Church of the Trinity at Caen, the beautiful edifice founded by her at the time when her husband founded the companion church of St. Etienne in the same city. In fact, Dr. Rock thinks the tapestry was made in London, to the order of three men quite unknown to fame, whose names appear more than once on the tapestry itself. Coming over with the Conqueror, they obtained wide possessions in England, as appears from the Doomsday Book, and would naturally have wished to make a joint offering to the cathedral of their native city. In support of this view, it is shown that the long strip of needlework exactly fits both sides of the nave of the cathedral at Bayeux, where until recent times it has hung.

The tapestry has undergone so many vicissitudes that it is a matter for wonder that it has been preserved in such good condition for eight hundred years. At one time it was exhibited at the Hôtel de Ville, at Bayeux, fixed panorama-fashion on two rollers, so that it was at the disposal of the fingers as well as the eyes of the curious. When Napoleon was thinking of invading this country, he had the tapestry carried to the various towns of France and publicly exhibited, so as to arouse popular enthusiasm on behalf of his designs.

In 1871, when the Prussians were thought to be in dangerous proximity to Bayeux, the tapestry was taken down, enclosed in a metal cylinder, and buried in a secret place until the close of the war. Now it is kept in the Public Library in an upright glass case, which forms the sides of a hollow parallelogram, the tapestry being carried first round the outside and then round the inside space, so that every part of it is open to inspection, while it cannot be touched or mutilated. This valuable information is given by Mr. T. C. Hepworth.

In the Old Testament we find records of "hangings of fine twined linen" and "hangings of white cloth, of green, of blue, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple." Shakespeare has several allusions to tapestry: as, "fly-bitten tapestry"; "worm-eaten tapestry"; "covered o'er with Turkish tapestry"; "the tapestry of my dining chambers"; "it was hanged with tapestry of silk"; "in cypress chests my arras"; "hangings all of Tyrian tapestry."

Cardinal Wolsey's private accounts and inventories, still preserved, state that in 1552 he bought one hundred and thirty-two large pieces of Brussels tapestry, woven with Scriptural subjects and mostly made to order, so as to fit exactly the various wall spaces. Among the wall-pieces, "in addition to the numerous sacred subjects are mentioned mythological scenes, romances, historical pieces and hangings of verdure," the last being decorative work, in which trees and foliage formed the main design, with accessory figures engaged in hunting, hawking and the like.

We read in Gibbon's Rome that Charles the Sixth despatched, by way of Hungary, Arras tapestry representing the battles of the great Alexander. And Macaulay inquires, "Where were now the brave old hangings of Arras which had adorned the walls of lordly mansions in the days of Elizabeth?"

According to Shakespeare, the arras was found convenient to conceal eaves-droppers, those planning a frolic or plotting mischief; or for a hasty lunch, as in The Woman Hater, by Beaumont and Fletcher:

I have of yore made many a scrambling meal, In corners, behind arrases, on stairs.

Arras was used precisely the same as a curtain; it hung on tenters or lines from the rafters or from some temporary stay, and was opened, held up, or drawn aside, as occasion required. The writers of the day frequently mentioned these wall-hangings. Evelyn, in his diary, 1641, says, "We were conducted to the lodgings, tapestry'd with incomparable arras."

Scott, in The Lady of the Lake, has this couplet:

In vain on gilded roof they fall, And lighten up a tapestried wall.

And in Waverley he speaks of "remnants of tapestried hangings, window curtains and shreds of pictures with which he had bedizened his tatters."

After the seventeenth century, these tapestries were used for covering furniture, as the seats and backs of sofas and arm chairs, desks and screens; and fire-screens covered with tapestry as beautiful as a painting were in vogue. In the Comedy of Errors we recall this passage:

In the desk That's covered o'er with Turkish tapestry There is a purse of ducats.

Clarence Cook says: "There was a kind of tapestry made in Europe in the fifteenth century—in Flanders, probably—in which there were represented gentlemen and ladies, the chatelaine and her suite walking in the park of the chateau. The figures, the size of life, seem to be following the course of a slender stream. The park in which these noble folk are stiffly disporting is represented by a wide expanse of meadow, guiltless of perspective, stretching up to the top of the piece of stuff itself, a meadow composed of leaves and flowers—bluebells, daisies, and flowers without a name—giving the effect of a close mosaic of green, mottled with colored spots. On the meadow are scattered various figures of animals and birds—the lion, the unicorn, the stag, and the rabbit. Here, too, are hawks and parrots; in the upper part is a heron, which has been brought down by a hawk and is struggling with the victor, some highly ornamental drops of blood on the heron's breast showing that he is done for. And to return to the brook which winds along the bottom of the tapestry, it is curious to note that this part of the work is more real and directly natural in its treatment than the rest. The water is blue, and is varied by shading and by lines that show the movement of the stream; the plants and bushes growing along its borders are drawn with at least a conventional look of life, some violets and fleur-de-lis being particularly well done; and in the stream itself are sailing several ducks, some pushing straight ahead, others nibbling the grass along the bank, and one, at least, diving to the bottom, with tail and feet in the air."

The best authority on tapestries in many lands is the exhaustive work by Muntz, published in Paris, 1878-1884, by the Société anonyme de Publication Périodique—three luxuriously bound and generously illustrated volumes, entitled Histoire Générale de la Tapisserie en Italie, en Allemagne, en Angleterre, en Espagne.

We learn here that in 1630 Le François, of Rouen, incited by the Chinese colored papers imported by the missionaries, tried to imitate the silk tapestries of the wealthy in a cheaper substance. He spread powdered wool of different colors on a drawing covered with a sticky substance on the proper parts. This papier velouté, called tontisse by Le François, was exported to England, where it became known as "flock paper." The English claim a previous invention by Jeremy Lanyer, who, in 1634, had used Chinese and Japanese processes. At any rate, the manufacture of flock papers spread in England and was given up in France. Only toward the middle of the eighteenth century was the making of real colored papers (papier peints) begun in France and England. The first factory was set up in 1746, but the work was not extended further until 1780, when it was taken up by the brothers George and Frederic Echardt.

Chinese picture papers were imported into France by Dutch traders and used to decorate screens, desks, chimney-pieces, etc., as early as the end of the seventeenth century. By the middle of the eighteenth, they were an important ornament of elegant interiors. In the list of the furniture given to Mlle. Desmares by Mlle. Damours, September 25, 1746, is a fire-screen of China paper, mounted on wood, very simple. On July 25, 1755, Lazare Duvaux delivered to Mme. de Brancas, to be sent to the Dauphiness, a sheet of China paper with very beautiful vases and flowers, for making which he charged thirty livres. April 6, 1756, he sold to the Countess of Valentinois, for one hundred and forty-four livres, six sheets of China paper, painted on gauze with landscapes and figures.

May 8, 1770, M. Marin advertised for sale in a Paris newspaper twenty-four sheets of China paper, with figures and gilt ornaments, ten feet high and three and one-half feet wide, at twenty-four livres a sheet; to be sold all together, or in lots of eight sheets each. By this time whole rooms were papered. July 15, 1779, an apartment in Paris was advertised to let, having a pretty boudoir with China paper in small figures representing arts and crafts, thirteen sheets, with a length of thirty-seven feet (horizontally) and height of eight feet ten inches, with gilt beaded moulding. Dec. 31, 1781, "For sale, at M. Nicholas's, China wall-paper, glazed, blue ground, made for a room eighteen feet square, with gilt moulding."

Mr. Aumonier says: "Notwithstanding the Chinese reputation for printing from wooden blocks from time immemorial, no specimens of their work produced by that process have ever come under the notice of the author, in public museums or elsewhere, and it is far more probable that early Chinese works imported into Europe were painted by hand, in imitation of the wondrous needlework, for which, through unknown ages, the Eastern peoples have been famous. A most perfect and beautiful example of this work, of Japanese origin, may be seen in the "Queen's palace at the Hague," called the Huis-ten-Bosch—the House-in-the-Wood. This is a magnificent composition of foliage and flowers, birds and butterflies, perfect in form and beauty of tint, worked in silks on a ground of écru satin. It is composed of many breadths forming one picture, starting from the ground with rock-work, and finishing at the top of the wall with light sprays of flowers, birds, butterflies and sky; the colouring of the whole so judiciously harmonized as to be an object lesson of great value to any decorator, and worth traveling many miles to study."

I think that we may now safely say that China holds the honors in this matter. And as most of us grow a bit weary of continuous citations from cyclopedias, which are quoted because there is nothing less didactic to quote, and there must be a historical basis to stand on and start from, let us wander a little from heavy tomes and see some of the difficulties encountered in looking up old wall-papers to be photographed.

An American artist, who has made his home in Paris for years, looked over the photographs already collected, grew enthusiastic on the subject, and was certain he could assist me, for, at the Retrospective Exhibition held in that city in 1900, he remembered having seen a complete exhibition of wall-papers and designs from the beginning. Of course the dailies and magazines of that season would have full reports. "Just send over to Jack Cauldwell—you know him. He is now occupying my studio, and he will gladly look it up."

I wrote, and waited, but never received any response; heard later that he was painting in Algiers and apparently all the hoped-for reports had vanished with him. My famously successful searcher after the elusive and recondite gave up this fruitless hunt in despair. Other friends in Paris were appealed to, but could find nothing.

Then many told me, with confidence, that there must be still some handsome old papers in the mansions of the South. And I did my best to secure at least some bits of paper, to show what had been, but I believe nearly all are gone "down the back entry of time."

One lady, belonging to one of the best old families of Virginia, writes me, "My brother has asked me to write to you about wall-papers. I can only recall one instance of very old or peculiar papering in the South, and my young cousin, who is a senior in the Columbia School of Architecture and very keen on 'Colonial' details, tells me that he only knows of one. He has just been through tide-water Virginia, or rather, up the James and Rappahannock rivers, and he says those houses are all without paper at all, as far as he knows.

"At Charlestown, West Virginia, there is a room done in tapestry paper in classic style, the same pattern being repeated, but this is not old, being subsequent to 1840. The room that I have seen is wainscoted, as is the one at Charlestown, and has above the wainscoting a tapestry paper also in shades of brown on a white ground.

"The principal wall has a large classical design, with columns, ships and figures, not unlike the Turner picture of Carthage, as I remember it. This picture is not repeated, but runs into others. Whether each is a panel, or they are merged into one another by foliage, I am unable to recall. I know that there is a stag hunt and some sylvan scenes. It seemed as if the paper must have been made with just such a room in mind, as the patterns seemed to fit the spaces. As the room was the usual corner parlor common to Southern mansions, it was probably made for the type. I was told by a boarder in this house that the paper was old and there were similar papers in Augusta County. I do not know whether these are choice and rare instances, or whether they are numerous and plentiful in other sections."

All my responses from the South have been cordial and gracious and interesting, but depressing.

I hear, in a vague way, of papers that I really should have—in Albany and Baltimore. We all know of the papers in the Livingston and Jumel mansions; the former are copied for fashionable residences.

I heard of some most interesting and unusual papers in an old house in Massachusetts, and after struggling along with what seemed almost insurmountable hindrances, was at last permitted to secure copies. The owner of the house died; the place was to be closed for six months; then it was to be turned over to the church, for a parsonage, and I agonised lest one paper might be removed at once as a scandalous presentment of an unholy theme. I was assured that in it the Devil himself was caught at last, by three revengeful women, who, in a genuine tug-of-war scrimmage, had torn away all of his tail but a stub end. Finally I gained a rather grudging permit for my photographer to copy the papers—"if you will give positive assurance that neither house nor walls shall be injured in the slightest degree."

PLATE III.

In abrupt contrast with the preceding specimen, this old French paper is printed with great care and shows high artistic taste. The eight well-composed groups of figures that form the complete design are after the manner of Watteau; the coloring is rich but quiet. Seventeen shades and colors were imposed on a brown ground, and the black mesh-work added over all.

As the artist is a quiet gentleman—also an absolute abstainer—so that I could not anticipate any damage from a rough riot or a Bacchanalian revel, I allowed him to cross the impressive threshold of the former home of a Massachusetts governor, and the result was a brilliant achievement, as may be seen in the end papers of this book.

Sometimes when elated by a promise that a certain paper, eagerly desired, could be copied, I sent my man only to have the door held just a bit open, while he heard the depressing statement that madam had "changed her mind and didn't want the paper to be taken."

All this is just a reminder that it is not entirely easy to get at what is sure so soon to disappear. And I mourn that I did not think years ago of securing photographs of quaint and antique papers.

Man has been defined as "an animal who collects." There is no hobby more delightful, and in this hunt I feel that I am doing a real service to many who have not time to devote to the rather difficult pursuit of what will soon be only a remembrance of primitive days.

II

PROGRESS AND IMPROVEMENT IN THE ART

IF we go far enough back in trying to decide the origin of almost any important discovery, we are sure to find many claimants for the honor. It is said, on good authority, that "paper-hangings for the walls of rooms were originally introduced in China." This may safely be accepted as correct. The Chinese certainly discovered how to make paper, then a better sort for wall hangings, and by Chinese prisoners it was carried to Arabia. Travellers taking the news of the art to their homes in various countries, it soon became a subject of general interest, and variations and inventions in paper manufacture were numerous.

We are apt to forget how much we owe to the Chinese nation—the mariners' compass, gun-powder, paper, printing by moveable types (a daily paper has been published in Pekin for twelve hundred years, printed, too, on silk). They had what we call The Golden Rule five hundred years before Christ was born. With six times the population of the United States, they are the only people in the world who have maintained a government for three thousand years.

The earliest papers we hear of anywhere were imported from China, and had Chinese or Indian patterns; coming first in small sheets, then in rolls. Some of the more elaborate kinds were printed by hand; others were printed from blocks. These papers, used for walls, for hangings, and for screens, were called "pagoda papers," and were decorated with flowers, symbolic animals and human figures.

The Dutch were among the most enterprising, importing painted hangings from China and the East about the middle of the sixteenth century. Perhaps these originated in Persia; the word "chintz" is of Persian origin, and the French name for its imitations was "perses."

From the Dutch, these imported hangings were soon carried to England, France, Germany and other Continental nations. Each nation was deadly jealous in regard to paper-making, even resorting, in Germany in 1390, to solemn vows of secrecy from the workman and threats of imprisonment for betrayal of methods. Two or three centuries later, the Dutch prohibited the exportation of moulds under no less a penalty than death.

The oldest allusion to printed wall-papers that I have found is in an account of the trial, in 1568, of a Dutch printer, Herman Schinkel of Delft, on the charge of printing books inimical to the Catholic faith. The examination showed that Schinkel took ballad paper and printed roses and stripes on the back of it, to be used as a covering for attic walls.

In the Library of the British Museum may be seen a book, printed in Low Dutch, made of sixty specimens of paper, each of a different material. The animal and vegetable products of which the workmen of various countries tried to manufacture paper would make a surprising list. In England, a paper-mill was set up probably a century before Shakespeare's time. In the second part of Henry the Sixth is a reference to a paper-mill.

About 1745, the Campagnie des Indes began to import these papers directly. They were then also called "Indian" papers. August 21, 1784, we find an advertisement: "For sale—20 sheets of India paper, representing the cultivation of tea."

Such a paper, with this same theme, was brought to America one hundred and fifty years ago—a hand-painted Chinese wall-paper, which has been on a house in Dedham ever since, and is to-day in a very good state of preservation. Of this paper I give three reproductions from different walls of the room.

In Le Mercure, June, 1753, M. Prudomme advertised an assortment of China paper of different sizes; and again, in May, 1758, that he had received many very beautiful India papers, painted, in various sizes and grounds, suitable for many uses, and including every kind that could be desired. This was the same thing that was called "China" paper five years before.

The great development of the home manufacture of wall-papers, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, put an end to the importation from China. The English were probably the first importers of these highly decorative Chinese papers, and quickly imitated them by printing the papers. These "papiers Anglais" soon became known on the Continent, and the French were also at work as rivals in their manufacture and use. Of a book published in 1847, called The Laws of Harmonious Colouring, the author, one David R. Hay, was house painter and decorator to the Queen. I find that he was employed as a decorator and paper-hanger by Sir Walter Scott, and he says that Sir Walter directed everything personally. Mr. Hay speaks of a certain Indian paper, of crimson color, with a small gilded pattern upon it. "This paper Sir Walter did not quite approve of for a dining-room, but as he got it as a present, expressly for that purpose, and as he believed it to be rare, he would have it put up in that room rather than hurt the feelings of the donor. I observed to Sir Walter that there would be scarcely enough to cover the wall; he replied in that case I might paint the recess for the side-board in imitation of oak." Mr. Hay found afterwards that there was quite enough paper, but Sir Walter, when he saw the paper on the recess, heartily wished that the paper had fallen short, as he liked the recess much better unpapered. So in the night Mr. Hay took off the paper and painted the recess to look like paneled oak. This was in 1822.

Sir Walter, in a letter to a friend, speaks of "the most splendid Chinese paper, twelve feet high by four wide; enough to finish the drawing-room and two bed-rooms, the color being green, with rich Chinese figures." Scott's own poem, The Lady of the Lake, has been a favorite theme for wall-paper.

Professor W. E. D. Scott, the Curator of Ornithology at Princeton College, in his recent book, The Story of a Bird Lover, alludes, in a chapter about his childhood, to the papers on the walls of his grandfather's home: "As a boy, the halls interested me enormously; they have been papered with such wall-paper as I have never seen elsewhere. The entrance hall portrayed a vista of Paris, apparently arranged along the Seine, with ladies and gentlemen promenading the banks, and all the notable buildings, the Pantheon, Notre Dame, and many more distributed in the scene, the river running in front.

"But it was when I reached the second story that my childish imagination was exercised. Here the panorama was of a different kind; it represented scenes in India—the pursuit of deer and various kinds of smaller game, the hunting of the lion and the tiger by the the natives, perched on great elephants with magnificent trappings. These views are not duplicated in the wall-paper; the scene is continuous, passing from one end of the hall to the other, a panorama rich in color and incident. I had thus in my mind a picture of India, I knew what kind of trees grew there, I knew the clothes people wore and the arms they used while hunting. To-day the same paper hangs in the halls of the old house."

There are several papers of this sort, distinctly Chinese, still on walls in this country. A house near Portsmouth, which once belonged to Governor Wentworth, has one room of such paper, put on about 1750. In Boston, in a Beacon Street house, there is a room adorned with a paper made to order in China, with a pattern of birds and flowers, in which there is no repetition; and this is not an uncommon find. A brilliant example of this style may be seen in Salem, Mass.

Chinese papers, which were made for lining screens and covering boxes, were used in England and this country for wall-papers, and imitated both there and here. One expert tells me that the early English papers were often designed after India cottons, in large bold patterns.

The first use in France of wall-papers of French manufacture was in the sixth century. Vachon tells about Jehan Boudichon and his fifty rolls of paper for the King's bed-chamber in 1481, lettered and painted blue; but it is evident from the context that they were not fastened on the walls, but held as scrolls by figures of angels.

Colored papers were used for temporary decorations at this time, as at the entrance of Louis XIII. into Lyons, on July 17, 1507. There is nothing to show that the "deux grans pans de papier paincts," containing the history of the Passion, and of the destruction of Jerusalem from the effects of the cannon of St. Peter, were permanently applied to a wall. So with another painted paper, containing the genealogy of the Kings of France, among the effects of Jean Nagerel, archdeacon at Rouen in 1750. These pictured papers, hung up on the walls as a movable decoration, form one step in the development of applied wall-papers.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the commonest patterns for unpictorial wall decoration were taken from the damasks and cut-velvets of Sicily, Florence, Genoa, and other places in Italy. Some form of the pine-apple or artichoke pattern was the favorite, a design developed partly from Oriental sources and coming to perfection at the end of the fifteenth century, copied and reproduced in textiles, printed stuffs, and wall-papers, with but little change, down to the nineteenth century.

From the Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. XVII, I quote again: "Wall-papers did not come into common use in Europe until the eighteenth century, though they appear to have been used much earlier by the Chinese. A few rare examples exist in England, which may be as early as the eighteenth century; these are imitations, generally in flock, of the fine old Florentine and Genoese cut-velvets, and hence the style of the design in no way shows the date of the paper, the same traditional patterns being reproduced for many years, with little or no change. Machinery enabling paper to be made in long strips was not invented till the end of the eighteenth century, and up to that time wall-paper was painted on small squares of hand-made paper, difficult to hang, disfigured by joints, and consequently costly; on this account wall-papers were slow in superseding the older modes of mural decoration, such as wood panelling, painting, tapestry, stamped leather, and printed cloth. A little work by Jackson, of Battersea, printed in London in 1744, gives some light on papers used at that time. He gives reduced copies of his designs, mostly taken from Italian pictures or antique sculpture during his residence in Venice. Instead of flowering patterns covering the walls, his designs are all pictures—landscapes, architectural scenes, or statues—treated as panels, with plain paper or painting between. They are all printed in oil, with wooden blocks worked with a rolling press, apparently an invention of his own. They are all in the worst possible taste, and yet are offered as an improvement on the Chinese papers then in vogue."

In 1586 there was in Paris a corporation called dominotiers, domino makers, which had the exclusive right to manufacture colored papers; and they were evidently not a new body. "Domino" was an Italian word, used in Italy as early as the fifteenth century for marbled paper. French gentlemen, returning from Milan and Naples, brought back boxes or caskets lined with these papers, which were imitated in France and soon became an important article of trade. The foreign name was kept because of the prejudice in favor of foreign articles. But French taste introduced a change in the character of the ornament, preferring symmetrical designs to the hap-hazard effect of the marbling. They began then to print with blocks various arabesques, and to fill in the outlines with the brush.

In Furetiere's Dictionary, of the last quarter of the seventeenth century, dominotier is defined, "workman who makes marbled paper and other papers of all colors and printed with various figures, which the people used to call 'dominos'."

On March 15, 1787, a decree of the French King's Council of State declared that the art of painting and printing paper to be used in furnishings was a dependence of the governing board of the "Marchands-Papetiers-Dominotiere-Feuilletinere."

This domino-work was for a long time principally used by country folk and the humbler citizens of Paris to cover parts of their rooms and shops; but near the end of the seventeenth century there was hardly a house in Paris, however magnificent, that did not have some place adorned with some of this domino-work, with flowers, fruits, animals and small human figures. These pictures were often arranged in compartments. The dominotiers made paper tapestries also, and had the right to represent portraits, mythological scenes and Old and New Testament stories. At first they introduced written explanations, but the letter printers thought this an infringement of their rights; therefore it was omitted.

We are told by Aumonier that little precise information is to be found concerning the domino papers. "Some were made from blocks of pear-tree wood, with the parts to be printed left in relief, like type. The designs were small pictures and in separate sheets, each subject complete to itself. They were executed in printing-ink by means of the ordinary printing-press. Some were afterwards finished by hand in distemper colors; others were printed in oil, gold-sized and dusted over with powdered colors, which gave them some resemblance to flock papers."

Much is said about flock paper, and many were the methods of preparing it. Here is one: "Flock paper, commonly called cloth paper, is made by printing the figures with an adhesive liquid, commonly linseed oil, boiled, or litharge. The surface is then covered with the flock, or woolen dust, which is produced in manufactories by the shearing of woolen cloths, and which is dyed of the requisite colors. After being agitated in contact with the paper, the flocks are shaken off, leaving a coating resembling cloth upon the adhesive surface of the figures." The manufacture of this paper was practised, both in England and France, early in the seventeenth century. I find in the Oxford Dictionary the following examples of the early mention of flock cloth, which was the thing that suggested to Le François his invention of flock paper:

Act I of Richard III., C. 8, preamble: "The Sellers of such course Clothes, being bare of Threde, usen for to powder the cast Flokkys of fynner Cloth upon the same." Again in 1541, Act of Henry VIII., C. 18: "Thei—shall (not) make or stoppe any maner Kerseies with flocks."

"Flock, which is one of the most valuable materials used in paper staining, not only from its cost, but from its great usefulness in producing rich and velvety effects, is wool cut to a fine powder. The wool can be used in natural color or dyed to any tint. The waste from cloth manufactures furnished the chief supply, the white uniforms of the Austrian soldiery supplying a considerable portion."

Other substances have been tried, as ground cork, flock made from kids' and goats' hair, the cuttings of furs and feathers, wood, sawdust, and, lately, a very beautiful flock made of silk, which gives a magnificent effect, but is so expensive that it can only be used for "Tentures de luxe."

Mr. Aumonier says: "Until quite recently there were on the walls of some of the public rooms in Hampton Court Palace several old flock papers, which had been hung so long ago that there is now no official record of when they were supplied. They were of fine, bold design, giving dignity to the apartments, and it is greatly to be regretted that some of them have been lately replaced by a comparatively insignificant design in bronze, which already shows signs of tarnishing, and which will eventually become of an unsightly, dirty black. All decorators who love their art will regret the loss of these fine old papers, and will join with the writer in the hope that the responsible authorities will not disturb those that still remain, so long as they can be kept on the walls; and when that is no longer possible, that they will have the designs reproduced in fac-simile, which could be done at a comparatively small cost.

"Mr. Crace, in his History of Paperhangings, says that by the combination of flock and metal, 'very splendid hangings' are produced; an opinion to which he gave practical expression some years afterwards when he was engaged in decorating the new House of Parliament, using for many of the rooms rich and sumptuous hangings of this character, especially designed by the elder Pugin, and manufactured for Mr. Crace from his own blocks."

In England, in the time of Queen Anne, paper staining had become an industry of some importance, since it was taxed with others for raising supplies "to carry on the present war"—Marlborough's campaign in the low countries against France. Clarence Cook, whom I am so frequently quoting because he wrote so much worth quoting, says:

"One of the pleasant features of the Queen Anne style is its freedom from pedantry, its willingness to admit into its scheme of ornamentation almost anything that is intrinsically pretty or graceful. We can, if we choose, paint the papers and stuffs with which we cover our walls with wreaths of flowers and festoons of fruits; with groups of figures from poetry or history; with grotesques and arabesques, from Rome and Pompeii, passed through the brains of Louis XIV's Frenchmen or of Anne's Englishmen; with landscapes, even, pretty pastorals set in framework of wreaths or ribbon, or more simply arranged like regular spots in rows of alternate subjects."

It may be interesting to remember that the pretty wall-papers of the days of Queen Anne and early Georges were designed by nobody in particular, at a time when there were no art schools anywhere; and one can easily see that the wall-papers, the stuff-patterns and the furniture of that time are in harmony, showing that they came out of the same creative mould, and were the product of a sort of spirit-of-the-age.

Mica, powdered glass, glittering metallic dust or sand, silver dross, and even gold foil, were later used, and a silver-colored glimmer called cat-silver, all to produce a brilliant effect. This art was known long ago in China, and I am told of a Chinese paper, seen in St. Petersburg, which had all over it a silver-colored lustre.

Block printing and stencilling naturally belong to this subject, but, as my theme is "Old Time Wall Papers," and my book is not intended to be technical, or a book of reference as regards their manufacture, I shall not dwell on them.

Nor would it be wise to detail all the rival claimants for the honor of inventing a way of making wall-paper in rolls instead of small sheets; nor to give the names even of all the famous paper-makers. One, immortalized by Carlyle in his French Revolution, must be mentioned—Revillon, whose papers in water colors and in flock were so perfect and so extremely beautiful that Madame de Genlis said they cost as much as fine Gobelin tapestry. Revillon had a large factory in the Rue du Faubourg St. Antoine, Paris, and in 1788 was employing three hundred hands. He was urged to incite his workmen to head the Faubourg in open rebellion, but refused to listen; and angry at his inability to coerce this honorable man the envoy caused a false report to be spread about, that he intended to cut his wages one-half.

PLATE IV.

Scenes from the life of an eighteenth century gallant form this unusual old French paper—a gaming quarrel, a duel, an elopement and other edifying episodes, framed in rococo scrolls.

This roused a furious mob, and everything was ruined, and he never recovered from the undeserved disaster.

Carlyle closes his description of the fatal riot with these words: "What a sight! A street choked up with lumber, tumult and endless press of men. A Paper-Warehouse eviscerated by axe and fire; mad din of revolt; musket volleys responded to by yells, by miscellaneous missiles, by tiles raining from roof and window, tiles, execrations and slain men!—There is an encumbered street, four or five hundred dead men; unfortunate Revillon has found shelter in the Bastille."

England advanced in the art of paper-making during the time the French were planning the Revolution, and English velvet papers became the fashion. In 1754 Mme. de Pompadour had her wardrobe and the passage that led to her apartments hung with English paper. In 1758 she had the bath-room of the Chateau de Champs papered with it, and others followed her example.

But in 1765 the importation of English papers—engraved, figured, printed, painted to imitate damasks, chintzes, tapestries, and so on—was checked by a heavy tax. So at this time papers were a precious and costly possession. They were sold when the owner was leaving a room, as the following advertisements will show:

Dec. 17, 1782. "To-let; large room, with mirror over the fire-place and paper which the owner is willing to sell."

Feb. 5, 1784. "To-let; Main body of a house, on the front, with two apartments, one having mirrors, woodwork and papers, which will be sold."

When the owner of the paper did not succeed in selling it, he took it away, as it was stretched on cloth or mounted on frames. These papers were then often offered for sale in the Parisian papers; we find advertised in 1764, "The paperhangers for a room, painted green and white"; November 26, 1766, "A hanging of paper lined with muslin, valued at 12 Livres"; February 13, 1777, "For sale; by M. Hubert, a hanging of crimson velvet paper, pasted on cloth, with gilt mouldings"; April 17, 1783, "38 yards of apple-green paper imitating damask, 24 livres, cost 38."

By 1782, the use of wall-papers became so general that, from that time on, the phrase "decorated with wall-paper" frequently occurs in advertisements of luxurious apartments to let. Before this time, mention had commonly been made, in the same manner, of the woodwork and mirrors.

October 12, 1782, the Journal general de France advertised: "To let; two houses, decorated with mirrors and papers, one with stable for five horses, 2 carriage-houses, large garden and well, the other with three master's apartments, stable for 12 horses, 4 carriage-houses, etc." Oct. 28, 1782, "To let; pretty apartment of five rooms, second floor front, with mirrors, papers, etc." Feb. 24, 1783, "To let; rue Montmartre, first floor apartment, with antechamber; drawing-room, papered in crimson, with mouldings; and two bed-rooms, one papered to match, with two cellars."

Mme. du Bocage, in her Letters on England, Holland, and Italy, (1750) gives an account of Mrs. Montague's breakfast parties: "In the morning, breakfasts agreeably bring together the people of the country and strangers, in a closet lined with painted paper of Pekin, and furnished with the choicest movables of China.

"Mrs. Montague added, to her already large house, 'the room of the Cupidons', which was painted with roses and jasmine, intertwined with Cupids, and the 'feather room,' which was enriched with hangings made from the plumage of almost every bird."

III

EARLIEST WALL PAPERS IN AMERICA

WALL-PAPERS of expensive styles and artistic variety were brought to America as early as 1735. Before that time, and after, clay paint was used by thrifty housewives to freshen and clean the sooty walls and ceilings, soon blackened by the big open fires. This was prepared simply by mixing with water the yellow-gray clay from the nearest claybank.

In Philadelphia, walls were whitewashed until about 1745, when we find one Charles Hargrave advertising wall-paper, and a little later Peter Fleeson manufacturing paper-hangings and papir-maché mouldings at the corner of Fourth and Chestnut Streets.

Those who could not afford to import papers painted their walls, either in one color or stencilled in a simple pattern, or panelled, in imitation of French papers; each panel with its own picture, large or small. These attempts at decoration ranged with the taste and skill of the artist, from fruit and floral designs and patterns copied from India prints and imported china, to more elaborate and often horrible presentments of landscapes and "waterscapes." The chimney breast, or projecting wall forming the chimney, received especial attention.

In my own farm-house, which was built in Colonial style in 1801 (with, as tradition says, forty pumpkin pies and two barrels of hard cider to cheer on the assisting neighbors), one of my first tasks was to have five or six layers of cheap papers dampened and scraped off. And, to my surprise, we found hand-painted flowers, true to nature and still extremely pretty, though of course scratched and faded after such heroic treatment—fuchsias in one room, carnation pinks in another, and in the front hall honeysuckle blossoms, so defaced that they suggested some of the animal tracks that Mr. Thompson-Seton copies in his books. What an amount of painstaking and skilled work all that implied! That was a general fashion at the time the house was built, and many such hand-paintings have been reported to me.

Mrs. Alice Morse Earle mentions one tavern parlor which she has seen where the walls were painted with scenes from a tropical forest. On either side of the fire-place sprang a tall palm tree. Coiled serpents, crouching tigers, monkeys, a white elephant, and every form of vivid-colored bird and insect crowded each other on the walls. And she speaks of a wall-paper on the parlor of the Washington Tavern at Westfield, Massachusetts, which gives the lively scenes of a fox chase.

Near Conway, New Hampshire, there is a cottage where a room can still be seen that has been most elaborately adorned by a local artist. The mountains are evenly scalloped and uniformly green, the sky evenly blue all the way round. The trees resemble those to be found in a Noah's Ark, and the birds on them are certainly one-fourth as large as the trees.

The painted landscapes are almost impossible to find, but I hear of one room, the walls of which are painted with small landscapes, water scenes, various animals, and trees. A sympathetic explorer has discovered another in similar style at Westwood, Massachusetts, near Dedham.

In the old "Johnson House," Charlestown, New Hampshire, the door remains on the premises, with hatchet marks still visible, through which the Indians, "horribly fixed for war," dashed in pursuit of their trembling victims. The hinges of hoop iron and latch with stringhole beneath are intact. A portion of its surface is still covered with the paint of the early settlers, made of red earth mixed with skimmed milk.

A friend wrote me that her grandmother said that "before wall-paper became generally used, many well-to-do persons had the walls of the parlor—or keeping room as it was sometimes called—and spare room tinted a soft Colonial yellow, with triangles, wheels or stars in dull green and black for a frieze; and above the chair-rail a narrower frieze, same pattern or similar, done in stencilling, often by home talent.

"My great aunt used to tell me that when company was expected, the edge of the floor in the 'keeping room' was first sanded, then the most artistic one of the family spread it evenly with a birch broom, and with sticks made these same wheels and scallops around the edge of the room, and the never-missing pitcher of asparagus completed the adornment."

On the panels of a mantel, she remembers, an artist came from New Boston and painted a landscape, while in the sitting-room, across the hall, a huge vase of gayly tinted flowers was painted over the mantel. On the mantel of another house was painted the Boston massacre. This was in existence only a few years ago.

Later came the black and white imitation of marble for the halls and stairs, and yellow floors with the stencil border in black. This was an imitation of the French. In Balzac's Pierrette is described a pretentious provincial house, of which the stairway was "painted throughout in imitation of yellow-veined black marble."

Madeleine Gale Wynne, in The House Beautiful, wrote most delightfully about "Clay, Paint and other Wall Furnishings," and I quote her vivid descriptions of the wall paintings she saw in Deerfield and Bernardston, Massachusetts.

"These wall paintings, like the embroideries, were derived from the India prints or the Chinese and other crockery. Whether the dweller in this far-off New England atmosphere was conscious of it or not, he was indebted to many ancient peoples for the way in which he intertwined his spray, or translated his flower and bud into a decorative whole.

"Odd and amusing are many of the efforts, and they have often taken on a certain individuality that makes a curious combination with the Eastern strain.

"An old house in Deerfield has the remains of an interesting wall, and a partition of another done in blue, with an oval picture painted over the mantel-tree. The picture was of a blue ship in full sail on a blue ocean.

"The other wall was in a small entry-way, and had an abundance of semi-conventionalized flowers done in red, black, and browns. The design was evidently painted by hand, and evolved as the painter worked. A border ran round each doorway, while the wall spaces were treated separately and with individual care; the effect was pleasing, though crude. Tulips and roses were the theme.

"This house had at one time been used as a tavern, and there is a tradition that this was one of several public houses that were decorated by a man who wandered through the Connecticut Valley during Revolutionary times, paying his way by these flights of genius done in oil. Tradition also has it that this man had a past; whether he was a spy or a deserter from the British lines, or some other fly-from-justice body, was a matter of speculation never determined. He disappeared as he came, but behind him he left many walls decorated with fruit and flowers, less perishable than himself.

"We find his handiwork not only in Deerfield, but in Bernardston. There are rumors that there was also a wall of his painting in a tavern which stood on the border line between Massachusetts and Vermont. In Connecticut, too, there are houses that have traces of his work. In Bernardston, Massachusetts, there is still to be seen a room containing a very perfect specimen of wall painting which is attributed to him. This work may be of later date, but no one knows its origin.

"This design is very pleasing, not only because of its antiquity and associations, but because in its own way it is a beautiful and fitting decoration. The color tones are full, the figures quaintly systematic and showing much invention.

"The body of the wall is of a deep cream, divided into diamond spaces by a stencilled design, consisting of four members in diamond shape; the next diamond is made up of a different set of diamonds, there being four sets in all; these are repeated symmetrically, so that a larger diamond is produced. Strawberries, tulips, and two other flowers of less pronounced individuality are used, and the colors are deliciously harmonized in spite of their being in natural tints, and bright at that. Now, this might have been very ugly—most unpleasing; on the contrary, it is really beautiful.

"There is both dado and frieze, the latter being an elaborate festoon, the former less good, made up of straggling palms and other ill considered and constructed growths. One suspects the dado to be an out-and-out steal from some chintz, while the tulips and strawberries bear the stamp of personal intimacy.

"The culminating act of imagination and art was arrived at on the chimney-breast decoration; there indeed do we strike the high-water mark of the decorator; he was not hampered either by perspective or probability.

"We surmise that Boston and its harbor is the subject; here are ships, horses and coaches, trees and road-ways, running like garlands which subdivide the spaces, many houses in a row, and finally a row of docile sheep that for a century have fed in unfading serenity at their cribs in inexplicable proximity to the base of the dwellings. All is fair in love, war, and decoration.

"The trees are green, the houses red, the sheep white, and the water blue; all is in good tone, and I wish that it had been on my mantel space that this renegade painter had put his spirited effort."

A friend told me of her vivid recollection of some frescoed portraits on the walls of the former home of a prominent Quaker in Minneapolis. Her letter to a cousin who attends the Friends' Meeting there brought this answer: "I had quite a talk with Uncle Junius at Meeting about his old house. Unfortunately, the walls were ruined in a fire a few years ago and no photograph had ever been taken of them. The portraits thee asked about were in a bed-room. William Penn, with a roll in his hand (the treaty, I suppose) was on one side of a window and Elizabeth Fry on the other. These two were life size.

"Then, (tell it not in Gath!) there was a billiard room. Here Mercury, Terpsichore and other gay creatures tripped around the frieze, and there was also a picture of the temple in Pompeii and Minerva with her owl. In the sitting room on one side of the bay window was a fisher-woman mending her net, with a lot of fish about her. On the other side of the window another woman was feeding a deer.

"On the dining-room walls a number of rabbits were playing under a big fern and there was a whole family of prairie chickens, and ducks were flying about the ceiling. Uncle Junius said, 'It cost me a thousand dollars to have those things frescoed on, and they looked nice, too!' I suppose when the Quaker preachers came to visit he locked up the billiard room and put them in the room with William Penn and Elizabeth Fry. He seemed rather mortified about the other and said it would not do to go into a Quaker book, at all!"

This house was built about the middle of the nineteenth century, when Minneapolis was a new town; but it undoubtedly shows the influence of the old New England which was the genial Friend's boyhood home. The scores of Quaker preachers and other visiting Friends who accepted the overflowing hospitality of this cheerfully frescoed house seem to have had none of the scruples of Massachusetts Friends of an earlier date. A lady sent me a strip of hideously ugly paper in squares, the colors dark brown and old gold. She wrote me that this paper was on the walls of the parlor of their house in Hampton, Massachusetts. The family were Friends; and once, when the Quarterly Meeting was held there, some of the Friends refused to enter their house, as the paper was too gay and worldly. And it actually had to be taken off!

After the clay paint and the hand painting came the small sheets or squares of paper, and again I was fortunate in finding in my adopted farm-house, in the "best room" upstairs, a snuff-brown paper of the "wine-glass" pattern that was made before paper was imported in rolls, and was pasted on the walls in small squares. The border looks as much like a row of brown cats sitting down as anything else. You know the family used to be called together to help cut out a border when a room was to be papered; but very few of these home-made borders are now to be found.

I was told of a lady in Philadelphia who grew weary of an old and sentimental pattern in her chamber, put on in small pieces and in poor condition, and begged her husband to let her take it off. But he was attached to the room, paper and all, and begged on his part that it might remain. She next visited queer old stores where papers were kept, and in one of them, in a loft, found enough of this very pattern, with Cupids and doves and roses, to re-paper almost the entire room. And it was decidedly difficult so to match the two sides of the face of the little God of Love as to preserve his natural expression of roguishness and merry consciousness of his power.

It may interest some to learn just what drew my attention to the subject of old-time wall-papers. One, and an especially fine specimen, is associated with my earliest memories, and will be remembered to my latest day. For, although a native of New Hampshire, I was born at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, and there was a merry dance to the music of mandolin and tambourine round the tomb of Virgil on my natal morn. Some men were fishing, others bringing in the catch; farther on was a picnic party, sentimental youths and maidens eating comfits and dainties to the tender notes of a flute. And old Vesuvius was smoking violently. All this because the room in which I made my début was adorned with a landscape or scenic paper.

Fortunately, this still remains on the walls, little altered or defaced by the wear of years. When admiring it lately, the suggestion came to me to have this paper photographed at once, and also that of the Seasons in the next house; these were certainly too rare and interesting to be lost. It is singular that the only papers of this sort I had ever seen were in neighboring homes of two professors at Dartmouth College, and remarkable that neither has been removed: now I find many duplicates of these papers.

What a keen delight it was to me as a child to be allowed to go to Professor Young's, to admire his white hair, which I called "pitty white fedders," and to gaze at the imposing sleighing party just above the mantel, and at the hunters or the haymakers in the fields! A good collection is always interesting, from choice old copies of first editions to lanterns, cow-bells, scissors, cup-plates, fans or buttons; and I mourn that I did not think of securing photographs of quaint and antique papers years ago, for most of them have now disappeared.

Showing the beginnings of my collection to an amateur photographer, he was intensely interested, and said: "Why, I can get you a set as good as these! The house has been owned by one family for eighty-five years, and the paper was put on as long ago as that." And certainly his addition is most interesting. The scenes in one are French. You see a little play going on, such as we have been told in a recent magazine article they still have in France—a street show in which a whole family often take part. They appear as accompaniment to a fair or festival. The hole for the stove-pipe, penetrating the foliage, has a ludicrous effect, contrasting in abrupt fashion—the old and the new, the imposing and the practical.

This enthusiastic friend next visited Medfield, Massachusetts, where he heard there were several such papers, only to be told that they had just been scraped off and the rooms modernized.

Hearing of a fine example of scenic paper in the old Perry House at Keene, New Hampshire, I wrote immediately, lest that, too, should be removed, and through the kindness of absolute strangers can show an excellent representation of the Olympic games, dances, Greeks placing wreaths upon altars, and other scenes from Grecian life, well executed. These are grand conceptions; I hope they may never be vandalized by chisel and paste, but be allowed to remain as long as that historic house stands. They are beautifully preserved.

PLATE V.

A detail of the preceding paper. Though well designed, this is not a beautifully colored or very well printed paper; the color scheme is carried out in fourteen printings.

A brief magazine article on my new enthusiasm, illustrated with photographs of papers I knew about, was received with surprising interest. My mail-bag came crowded, and I was well-nigh "snowed in," as De Quincy put it, by fascinating letters from men and women who rejoiced in owning papers like those of my illustrations, or had heard of others equally fine and equally venerable, and with cordial invitations to journey here and there to visit unknown friends and study their wall-papers, the coloring good as new after a hundred years or more. It was in this unexpected and most agreeable way that I heard of treasures at Windsor, Vermont; Claremont, New Hampshire; Taunton, Massachusetts, and quaint old Nantucket, and was informed that my special paper, with the scenes from the Bay of Naples (represented so faithfully that one familiar with the Italian reality could easily recognize every one) was a most popular subject with the early purchaser and was still on the walls of a dozen or more sitting-rooms.

The Reverend Wallace Nutting, of Providence, whose fame as an artistic photographer is widespread, sent me a picture of a parlor in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, where he found this paper. Three women dressed in old-fashioned style, even to the arrangement of their hair, are seated at table, enjoying a cup of tea. An old tabby is napping cosily in a soft-cushioned chair. And above, on the right, Vesuvius is pouring forth the usual volumes of smoke. A fine old mahogany side-board, at the foot of the volcano, decorated with decanters and glasses large and small, presents an inviting picture.

The house at Hillsboro Bridge, New Hampshire, where Ex-Governor Benjamin Pierce lived for years, and where his son, Franklin Pierce, passed a happy boyhood, has this paper, and several similar letters show how generally it was admired. Mrs. Lawrence, of Boston, wrote:

"I send by this mail a package of pictures, taken by my daughter, of the Italian wall-paper on her grandfather's old home in Exeter, N. H. The house is now owned by the Academy and used as a dormitory. The views which I enclose have never been published. We have two or three remarkable specimens of wall-paper made in India a hundred and fifty years ago; the strips are hanging on the wall, nailed up."

The Italian paper proved to be my old friend Vesuvius and his bay. An Exeter professor also wrote describing the same paper and adding translations of the Greek inscriptions on the monuments.

Friends would often write of such a wonderful specimen at some town or village. I would write to the address given and be told of this Bay of Naples paper again. They were all brought over and put on at about the same time.

One of the oldest houses in Windsor, Vermont, still has a charming parlor paper, with landscape and water, boats, castles, ruins and picturesque figures, which was imported and hung about 1810. This house was built by the Honorable Edward R. Campbell, a prominent Vermonter in his day, and here were entertained President Monroe and other notable visitors. Later the Campbell house was occupied for some years by Salmon P. Chase. It is now the home of the Sabin family.

A Boston antique dealer wrote me: "In an article of yours in The House Beautiful, you have a photograph of the paper of the old Perry House, Keene, N. H. We want to say that we have in our possession here at this store, strung up temporarily, a paper with the same subject. It forms a complete scene, there being thirty pieces in attractive old shades of brown. We bought this from a family in Boston some little time ago, and it is said to have been made in France for a planter in New Orleans in or before 1800. We feel we would be excused in saying that this is the most interesting lot of any such thing in existence. It has been handed down from family to family, and they, apparently, have shown it, because the bottom ends of some of the sheets are considerably worn from handling. You understand this paper was never hung on the wall and it is just as it was originally made." He fairly raves over the beautiful rich browns and cream and "O! such trees!"

To my inquiry whether his price for this paper was really two thousand dollars, as I had heard, he replied, "We would be very sorry to sell the paper for two thousand dollars, for it is worth five thousand."

An artist who called to examine the paper is equally enthusiastic. He writes: "I was greatly impressed by the remarkably fine execution of the entire work. Doubtless it was printed by hand with engraved blocks. A large per cent of the shading, especially the faces of the charming figures, was surely done by hand, and all is the production of a superior artist. There are several sections, each perhaps three feet square, of such fine design, grouping, finish and execution of light and shade, as to make them easily samples of such exquisite nicety and comprehensive artistic work as to warrant their being framed.

"The facial expression of each of the many figures is so true that it indicates the feelings and almost the thoughts of the person represented; there is remarkable individuality and surprising animation. I was forcibly struck with the inimitable perspective of the buildings and the entire landscape with which they are associated. Practically speaking, the buildings are of very perfect Roman architecture; there is, however, a pleasing venture manifested, where the artist has presented a little of the Greek work with here and there a trace of Egyptian, and perhaps of the Byzantine. These make a pleasing anachronism, such as Shakespeare at times introduced into his plays: a venture defended by Dr. Samuel Johnson, as well as other distinguished critics. The trees are done with an almost photographic truth and exactness. After a somewhat extended and critical examination of things of this kind in various parts of Europe, I do not hesitate to say that I have seen nothing of the kind that excels the work you have. What is quite remarkable about it, and more than all exhibits its truth to nature, it seems to challenge decision whether it shows to best advantage in strong daylight or twilight, by artificial light or that of the sun; an effect always present in nature, but not often well produced on paper or canvas. The successful venture to use so light a groundwork was much like that of Rubens, where he used a white sheet in his great painting, 'The Descent from the Cross.'"

Since the above description was written, this incomparable paper has passed into the hands of Mrs. Franklin R. Webber, 2nd, of Boston, who will either frame it, or in some other way preserve it as perfectly as possible.

The remarkable paper shown in [Plate XLI] and the three following plates were sent me by Miss Janet A. Lathrop of Stockport-on-Hudson, New York. It is certainly one of the finest of the scenic papers still in existence. The scene is oriental, the costumes seeming both Turkish and Chinese. Temples and pagodas, a procession, a barge on the river and a gathering in a tea-house follow in succession about the room. All are printed by hand on rice paper, in gray tones. The paper is browned with age, but was cleaned and restored about a year ago and is exceedingly well preserved.

The house in which this paper is hung was built by Captain Seth Macy, a retired sea-captain, in 1815. The paper was put on in 1820. Captain Seth seems to have used up all his fortune in building his house, and in a few years he was forced to sell it. The name of "Seth's Folly" still clings to the place. In 1853 Miss Lathrop's father bought the house, and it has ever since been occupied by his family. By a singular coincidence, Mrs. Lathrop recognized the paper as the same as some on the old house at Albany in which she was born. Repeated inquiries have failed to locate any other example in America, and photographs have been submitted without avail to both domestic and foreign experts for identification. In the early seventies Miss Lathrop chanced to visit a hunting-lodge belonging to the King of Saxony at Moritzburg, near Dresden, and in the "Chinese room" she found a tapestry or paper exactly similar, from which the paper on her own walls may have been copied.

The two papers just described would seem to be the finest examples of continuous scenic papers still extant. I learn as this book goes to press that Mrs. Jack Gardner, of Boston, has a remarkable old geographical paper, in which the three old-world continents are represented. I have been fortunate enough to secure, through the courtesy of Mrs. Russell Jarvis, a picture of the paper in her parlor at Claremont, New Hampshire. The Jarvis family have occupied the house since 1797. This is not a landscape, but consists of small pastoral scenes, placed at intervals and repeated regularly. The design is brown on a cream ground. It has a dado and a frieze in dark blue. It is hand made and all printed by hand, in squares of about eighteen inches, matched carefully. Mrs. Jarvis writes: "I had no idea that the photographer would take in so much each side of the corner, or I should have arranged the furniture differently. The picture I did not suppose was to appear is one of great interest and value. It is supposed to be a Rubens, and has hung there for over a hundred years. It was bought in 1791 in Boston, of a French gentleman from San Domingo, who, on the night of the insurrection there, escaped, saving but little else of his vast possessions. It had evidently been hastily cut from the frame. It represents the presentation of the head of the younger Cyrus to Tomyris, Queen of the Scythians. The coloring is fine, the figures very beautiful, and the satin and ermine of the Queen's dress extremely rich. If you look closely, you will see a sword lying on the piano. This is the one Sir William Pepperell was knighted with by King George the Second, in 1745, because of the Battle of Louisburg, and was given my husband's father by Sir William's grand-daughter, I believe."

You see how one photograph brings to you many valuable bits of information apart from the paper sought.

This letter, for example, with its accompanying photograph (see [Plate XXII]) leads one to the study of history, art, and literature. The subject of the picture, aside from its supposed origin, is of interest.

The Scythians were Aryans much mixed with Mongol blood; they disappear from history about 100 B. C. Cyrus the younger, after subduing the eastern parts of Asia, was defeated by Tomyris, Queen of the Massagetae in Scythia. Tomyris cut off his head and threw it into a vessel filled with human blood, saying, as she did so, "There, drink thy fill."

Dante refers to this incident in his Purgatory, xii; and Sackville, in his Mirrour for Magistrates, 1587, says:

Consyder Cyrus— He whose huge power no man might overthrowe, Tomyris Queen, with great despite hath slowe, His head dismembered from his mangled corpse Herself she cast into a vessel fraught With clotted blood of them that felt her force, And with these words a just reward she taught: "Drynke now thy fyll of thy desired draught."

Here seems to be the place to speak more fully of the small scenes placed regularly at intervals. There is a great variety of pretty medallion pictures of this sort, as, alternating figures of a shepherdess with her crook reclining on a bank near a flock of sheep, and a boy studying at a desk, with a teacher standing near by.

Mr. Frank B. Sanborn writes: "The oldest paper I ever saw was in the parlor of President Weare, of Hampton Falls—a simple hunting scene, with three compartments; a deer above, a dog below, and a hunter with his horn below that. It was put on in 1737, when the house was built, and, I think, is there still. Colonel Whiting's house had a more elaborate and extensive scene—what the French called 'Montagnes Russe'—artificial hills in a park, for sliding down, toboggan fashion, and a score of people enjoying them or looking on."

A good authority asserts that rolls of paper did not appear in this country until 1790, so that all these now mentioned must have been imported in square sheets. Notice the step forward—from white walls, through a clay wash, to hand painting, stencilling, small imported sheets, and, at last, to rolls of paper.

PLATE VI.

Fragment of the famous old racing paper from the Timothy Dexter house. This is too broken and stained to admit of the reproduction of its original colors—blue sky, gray clouds, green turf, brown horses and black, and jockeys in various colors. The scene here given fills the width of the paper, about eighteen inches.

IV

WALL PAPERS IN HISTORIC HOMES

ESTHER Singleton, in her valuable and charming book on French and English Furniture, tells us that in the early Georgian period, from 1714 to 1754, the art of the Regency was on the decline, and "the fashionable taste of the day was for Gothic, Chinese and French decorations; and the expensive French wall-painting and silken hangings were imitated in wall-paper and the taste even spread to America." In 1737, the famous Hancock House was being built and, until it was demolished a few years ago (1863), it was the last of the great mansions standing that could show what the stately homes of old Boston were like. This house was built by Thomas Hancock, son of the Rev. John Hancock, the kitchen of whose house is now owned by the Lexington Historical Society.

On January 23, 1737-8, we find him writing from Boston to Mr. John Rowe, Stationer, London, as follows: "Sir, Inclosed you have the Dimensions of a Room for a Shaded Hanging to be done after the Same Pattern I have sent per Captain Tanner, who will deliver it to you. It's for my own House and Intreat the favour of you to Get it Done for me to Come Early in the Spring, or as Soon as the nature of the Thing will admitt.

"The pattern is all was Left of a Room Lately Come over here, and it takes much in ye Town and will be the only paper-hanging for Sale here wh. am of opinion may Answer well. Therefore desire you by all means to get mine well Done and as Cheap as Possible and if they can make it more beautifull by adding more Birds flying here and there, with Some Landskips at the Bottom, Should like it well. Let the Ground be the Same Colour of the Pattern. At the Top and Bottom was a narrow Border of about 2 Inches wide wh. would have to mine. About three or four years ago my friend Francis Wilks, Esq., had a hanging Done in the Same manner but much handsomer Sent over here from Mr. Sam Waldon of this place, made by one Dunbar in Aldermanbury, where no doubt he, or some of his successors may be found. In the other part of these Hangings are Great Variety of Different Sorts of Birds, Peacocks, Macoys, Squirril, Monkys, Fruit and Flowers etc.

"But a greater Variety in the above mentioned of Mr. Waldon's and Should be fond of having mine done by the Same hand if to be mett with. I design if this pleases me to have two Rooms more done for myself. I Think they are handsomer and Better than Painted hangings Done in Oyle, so I Beg your particular Care in procuring this for me and that the patterns may be Taken Care of and Return'd with my goods."

John Adams writes in his Diary (1772): "Spent this evening with Mr. Samuel Adams at his house. Adams was more cool, genteel, and agreeable than common; concealed and retained his passions, etc. He affects to despise riches, and not to dread poverty; but no man is more ambitious of entertaining his friends handsomely, or of making a decent, an elegant appearance than he.

"He has newly covered and glazed his house, and painted it very neatly, and has new papered, painted and furnished his rooms; so that you visit at a very genteel house and are very politely received and entertained."

Paper is the only material with which a man of but little means can surround himself with a decorative motive and can enjoy good copies of the expensive tapestries and various hangings which, until recently, have been within the reach of the wealthy only. The paper-hanger was not so much a necessity in the old days as now. The family often joined in the task of making the paste, cutting the paper and placing it on the walls. This was not beneath the dignity of George Washington, who, with the assistance of Lafayette, hung on the walls at Mount Vernon paper which he had purchased abroad.

The story goes that the good Martha lamented in the presence of Lafayette that she should be unable to get the new paper hung in the banquet room in time for the morrow's ball in honor of the young Marquis. There were no men to be found for such work. Lafayette at once pointed out to Mistress Washington that she had three able-bodied men at her service—General Washington, Lafayette himself and his aide-de-camp. Whereupon the company fell merrily to work, and the paper was hung in time for the ball. Not only did the Father of our Country fight our battles for us, but there is evidence that he gracefully descended to a more peaceful level and gave us hints as to that valuable combination known to the world as flour paste.

There is in existence a memorandum in Washington's hand, which reads as follows:

"Upholsterer's directions:

"If the walls have been whitewashed over with glew water. If not—Simple and common paste is sufficient without any other mixture but, in either case, the Paste must be made of the finest and best flour, and free from lumps. The Paste is to be made thick and may be thinned by putting water to it.

"The Paste is to be put upon the paper and suffered to remain about five minutes to soak in before it is put up, then with a cloth press it against the wall, until all parts stick. If there be rinkles anywhere, put a large piece of paper thereon and then rub them out with cloth as before mentioned."

During the period when Mount Vernon was in private hands, the papers of Washington's day were removed. There is now on the upper hall a medallion paper which is reproduced from that which hung there at the time of the Revolution.

Benjamin Franklin was another of our great men who interested themselves in domestic details. In 1765 he was in London, when he received from his wife a letter describing the way in which she had re-decorated and furnished their home. Furniture, carpets and pictures were mentioned, and wall coverings as well. "The little south room I have papered, as the walls were much soiled. In this room is a carpet I bought cheap for its goodness, and nearly new.... The Blue room has the harmonica and the harpsichord, the gilt sconce, a card table, a set of tea china, the worked chairs and screen—a very handsome stand for the tea kettle to stand on, and the ornamental china. The paper of the room has lost much of its bloom by pasting up." This blue room must have been the subject of further correspondence. Nearly two years later Franklin wrote to his wife:

"I suppose the room is too blue, the wood being of the same colour with the paper, and so looks too dark. I would have you finish it as soon as you can, thus: paint the wainscot a dead white; paper the walls blue, and tack the gilt border round the cornice. If the paper is not equally coloured when pasted on, let it be brushed over again with the same colour, and let the papier maché musical figures be tacked to the middle of the ceiling. When this is done, I think it will look very well."

There are many old houses in New England and the Middle States which are of historic interest, and in some of these the original paper is still on the walls and in good preservation, as in the Dorothy Quincy house at Quincy, Massachusetts. The Dorothy Quincy house is now owned by the Colonial Dames of Massachusetts, who have filled it with beautiful colonial furniture and other relics of Dorothy Q's day. The papers on all the walls are old, but none so early as that on the large north parlor ([Plate XXIX]), which was imported from Paris to adorn the room in which Dorothy Quincy and John Hancock were to have been married in 1775. Figures of Venus and Cupid made the paper appropriate to the occasion.