find “old Hartington’s farm.” The warm October sun streamed down upon
us, the great red and russet rock-broken fields stretched off into the
beautiful lonely purple mountain, “heeding his sky affairs,” the dying
brakes and weeds sent forth their sweet nutty autumn fragrance, the soft
yellow and brown leaves fluttered down on us, and the ripe chestnutburrs
fell rustling by our side as we rode through the narrow wood-roads. The
hard New England landscape was softened and Orientalized by the yellow
autumn tints. The half-sad stillness of dying nature and the warmth of
the Indian summer inclined us to ride quietly and thoughtfully along the
country roads, but that neither Mr. Simmons, nor his new wagon, nor
Jenny, his steed, would for a moment permit. She had the unpleasant
habit, so common among country horses, of “slacking-up” suddenly at the
foot of every hill. The wagon was a “jump-seat,” so the back seat was
not fastened in securely. At every hill (and the New England hills are
countless) we and the seat were pitched forward on Mr. Simmons’s back.
He seemed to expect this assault and rather enjoy it. To quite
counterbalance this sudden stoppage of progression, Jenny would spring
forward with much and instantaneous speed whenever she caught sight of
Mr. Simmons’s short whip. This whip he used as a pointer in his many and
diffuse explanations, so whenever our attention was called to an old
house, or a poor “run-out” farm, or “the barn old White hung himself
in,” Jenny emphasized the explanation with a twitch of our necks that
brought into active play muscles little used before.
At last the long hill leading to the Hartington house was reached, the
longest and steepest yet seen. The road was almost unused, a mere track,
and spoke to our china hunting instincts most favorably of the little
intercourse held by the Hartingtons with the rest of the world. Slowly
plodded Jenny over the fringed gentians, for here the road was full of
them, as open and blue as the October sky over our heads. We had never
seen this lovely delicate flower growing elsewhere than sparsely by a
brookside or in damp ground, but here, on this rocky hill-side, in this
poor soil, it opened its blue eyes in such luxuriance that the road was
as full of its azure bloom as in September the fields are yellow with
goldenrod, or in June white with daisies. As we turned in from the main
country road we passed an elderly man with bowed head, ragged clothes,
slouching gait, and a general appearance of extreme depression and
sadness more marked even than is usual in the carriage of the New
England farmer. As he did not lift his head to look at us, nor nod with
the cordial common country form of recognition, we did not speak to him,
and he slowly followed us up the hill.
The Hartington house was a mansion, a brick manor-house. We were met at
the great door by a young untidy woman, whose clear pink-and-white
complexion and curly hair could not, however, compensate for her lack of
good teeth, several front teeth being missing and the others discolored.
This poor care and poor condition of the teeth is most common among New
England women in the country. Nearly every woman over thirty years of
age will show when speaking two rows of blue-white porcelain disks so
evidently false that they hardly seem like teeth, but look like a “card”
of cheap buttons. We thought her the daughter of the house; she proved
to be its mistress, the wife of Anthony Hartington. A more desolate,
unhappy, hopeless home I have never seen. The elderly gloomy man, who
now entered, proved to be Anthony himself. He spoke but little, and from
the young wife, who seemed in a feverish state of excitement at our
visit, we learned the forlorn and desolate story of the household.
Anthony had married early in life and had had nine children, all of
whom, with his wife, had died of that fell curse of New
England—consumption. The last child, a daughter, Luriella, had died in
June. This young wife had been her school friend and had married the
forlorn old man two years ago, in order to come to live there and nurse
her friend through her last illness, thus giving a touching example of
the life-sacrifices and self-abnegations so sadly frequent in New
England country homes. “We didn’t think she’d live through the winter,”
she said, “but she did, and died in June. I was glad she lived till it
was warm. It is so cold here in winter,” she added apologetically.
A heavy gloom settled on us as we walked from room to room, and I was
additionally overwhelmed by the uncanny, unreasoning sense that I had
been there before, had lived there. It was all so familiar to me, so
strangely well known, that I could scarcely speak, but walked bewildered
and frightened through the rooms I had known a hundred years ago. I have
never felt at any other time that sense of pre-existence, but I know
that nothing about that old house was new to me.
The upper part of the windows were of small panes of greenish
“bull’s-eye” glass, rarely found in the country now; the lower panes of
cheap, modern glass, some being broken and pasted over with dirty bits
of calico and paper, and all as opaque with dirt as the ancient upper
panes. Outside the windows lay an unkempt tangle of lilac bushes,
shrubs, weeds, straggling withered flowers, box borders, and thistles,
that once had been a lovely, well-kept garden, but had evidently been
unentered and unheeded for years. It stretched down the hill-side to the
well-tenanted family graveyard with its moss-grown and chipped slate
headstones with their winged cherubs’ heads and crossbones. I had often
gathered flowers in that garden; I remembered it well, and had walked
and played among the gravestones.
Inside the four great parlors hung cobwebs and dust—and wasps! the
floors were sprinkled with them; thousands lay dead in the two-feet-wide
window-seats, while swarms of live ones buzzed loudly at the dingy
windows. “They won’t touch you,” she said, as we drew back. “He thinks
there must be a nest somewhere.” A nest! A colony of nests rather—a
hundred nests, the accumulated nests of years.
The parlors had few pieces of furniture, and all were broken except a
modern marble-topped table and a “what-not.” “I bought these,” she said,
“when I was married, to please Luriella; I didn’t want to spend much,
for fear she would need medicine. But she didn’t take much at last; she
thought it didn’t do any good.”
A set of painted book-shelves in a corner held a few books, two or three
china dogs, some common seashells, a large ginger-jar, and a number of
really beautiful pewter porringers with handles. My companion had
already conveyed to “him” our wish “to buy any old pieces of furniture
or china you may wish to part with,” and though we had not heard a word
nor seen a gesture of assent, the wife told us that “he” was willing to
sell. Yet, when we said we would like to buy the little handled
porringers, he walked out of the room without a word.
All the wood-work in these parlors—the wainscoting, the high mantels,
the panels of the doors, the heavy window-frames—were ornamented with a
curious design, a row of half-pillars joined at the top in a series of
pointed arches, with carved sunbursts in the spandrels. It was most
graceful and odd—I have never seen it elsewhere—yet it was perfectly
familiar to me; I could almost remember, yes, I could remember, counting
the number of pillars in the room.
The two kitchens were enormous rooms. One, entirely closed away and
disused, disclosed a horror of dirt and rubbish, old pots and pans, and
tubs, and wheels, thrown, a shapeless mass, into the fireplace, and
scattered over the floor. In the smaller kitchen the chimney-nook, the
great fireplace, had been boarded over, and a small rusty kitchen stove
placed for daily use. I seemed to remember when I sat by this ingleside,
and great logs lay on this broad hearth, and the roaring flames surged
up the great chimney and threw their cheerful light into the now
desolate room.
Through this kitchen there wailed a moaning noise from the empty
chimney, which made even my cheerful companion look solemn and
depressed. She “didn’t like to hear it, either,” our guide said,
quietly.
Two bedrooms and a “living-room” completed the number of apartments on
the ground floor. But the living-room was not lived in; the two bedrooms
were the only apartments that bore signs of occupation. There was not a
carpeted floor in the house, but to these two rooms, braided rag rugs
and strips of homespun carpet gave an appearance of comparative comfort.
The “rising-sun” and “twin-sister” patchwork quilts on the untidy beds
added to the effect.
The most incongruous, most inadequate apartment on this floor was the
pantry, a little dark box of a closet, to which one small greenish glass
window dispensed a dingy light. We had intended to ask for our dinner,
since it was then “high noon,” but a sight of this cooking sanctum
dispelled all thought or wish for dinner. It was so cobwebby, so dusty,
so poor-looking, that we could not wish to eat any dinner that could
issue from its dark shadows. We found afterward, beyond the disused
kitchen, a large square room which, in the early days of the prosperity
and good cheer of this house, had doubtless been a pantry, but was now
filled with broken grindstones, crushed Dutch ovens, fragments of
crockery, pails and pans, “peels” and “slices,” yarn-winders, and part
of an old rose still. Indeed, through this entire house, nothing could
ever have been wholly destroyed or carried away, but was thrown, in its
broken, grimy desuetude, into some neglected closet or room to gather
years of dust and dirt, as if the owner, too poor to buy new furniture,
still clung to the shattered remnants of past plenty.
We rescued from the dingy little pantry, from among the litter of broken
cups and plates and knives, bunches of dried herbs, empty spice-boxes,
cracked woodenware, and greasy pans, a few treasures which we spread out
on the kitchen table—half a dozen “Pain’s Hill” plates (a favorite
pattern throughout New England), two open-work bordered Leeds platters,
a dear little boat-shaped queen’s-ware creamer with dainty twisted
handles, two helmet pitchers, two teacups, and half a dozen plates of a
set of old Lowestoft china bearing a pretty armorial device and
initials. We hardly dared ask to buy the latter pieces until we saw the
evident contempt the farm-wife had for them. Nothing so American as a
Lafayette or Pilgrim plate was to be seen.
One large dresser in the kitchen was found to be literally filled with
battered and broken brass and pewter candlesticks, glass whale-oil
lamps, snuffers, pewter savealls, extinguishers, and trays, and brass
chimney hooks for shovel and tongs. We rescued from this medley several
candlesticks, two curious Dutch hanging-lamps, and a really beautiful
but broken candelabra of Sheffield plate. These we placed with the china
on the kitchen table. I wished to add the pewter porringers found in the
parlor, but the wife softly drawled in her nasal voice: “He won’t sell
’em—they were hers—she used to make mud-pies in ’em when she was
little.” And pretty playthings they must have been—fifteen dear little
shallow pewter posnets and porringers with flat pierced handles, varying
in size from one large enough to hold a pint to a true doll’s or a
“’prentice” porringer an inch and a half in diameter. They were full of
little, common, colored pebbles and shells, dried seeds, and old purple
glass beads, perhaps just as “she” had last played with them. Other and
more distant memories, too, may have clung to the old porringers—of days
when the old man was a boy and took his “little porringer” and ate his
supper of bread and milk from it; and perhaps, in the far years when the
old man was a baby, his mother had had served to her in one of these old
porringers her “dish of caudle,” that rich mixture of eggs, spices,
bread, milk, and wine which was thought years ago to be the proper diet
for a sick person.
Then we mounted the spiral staircase to the second floor, the chambers.
Through this dreary expanse we walked slowly—the dusty half-furnishings
growing shabbier and shabbier—still stumbling over broken furniture on
the uneven floors, until we entered a south room that was such a blaze
of cheerful, yellow, tropical light that we exclaimed with delight.
Walls and ceilings were hung solid with long yellow ears of corn, left
to dry for use in the winter. Even the old cherry fourpost bedstead was
draped with them. Such a color! Such a glory! “She used to like to see
them too,” the low voice murmured.
A third story, a gambrel-roofed attic, was too dusty and repelling to
enter, but in one of the deserted bedrooms we found, whole, though black
with dust, a dressing-table which had been the lower portion of a high
chest of drawers. As is common now in New England farm-houses, the top
drawers had been lifted from this table portion and set upon the floor
to use as a bureau; not half so tidy and cleanly a fashion of furniture
as when it stood on its high legs and let a broom or brush sweep freely
every portion of the floor under it. The upper portion of this high
chest was seen afterward in the outer wood-shed full of strips of
leather, broken harness, nails, and pieces of iron. It had been gnawed
by rats and whittled by knives till it was valueless. The lower or table
portion was whole. It had three shallow “jewel drawers,” three deep
drawers with brass handles and carved “sunbursts.” It proved, when
dusted, to be of curled maple; and after long discussion with Mr.
Simmons we decided to take it with us. Its bowed legs ended in
claw-and-ball feet that would just set within the carriage sides. “If
one on ye don’t mind settin’ in front with me, the other can set in the
back seat with the table in front of her,” he said.
This young wife had not once shown the usual country curiosity about us,
but as she turned away to find some newspapers to wrap around the
plates, I said to her, “There is much here we should like to buy and
take away with us, but it would cost so much to move the pieces so far,
and they are so out of repair.” Then we told her who we were, whence we
came, what we should do with the china, and that we should often think
and speak of her when we looked at the plates this coming winter. “I
can’t bear to think of the winter without her,” she answered, softly.
Jenny had been fed and watered and “hitched up,” and we prepared to
start. I clambered into the back seat of the wagon, then the
dressing-table was lifted in and placed in front of me. Luckily its legs
were long enough, so the weight did not rest on my legs, else I could
never have taken it. Our laps were filled with the frail china; the
candlesticks, lamps, and two warming-pans were placed on the floor of
the wagon, and we started, leaving the two dreary figures and the dreary
house behind us. All the way down the steep hills I had to hold the
table to keep it off the occupants of the front seat, and all the way up
the steep hills it lay heavily in my lap; but at last we reached the
country station and packed our china and brass in two market-baskets
which Mr. Simmons brought us from his “store.” We could hear the sallies
of country wit from the loafers at the station at Mr. Simmons and his
strange load, and his indignant and most offensively personal and
profane answers in return. Then we received a baggage-check for the
dressing-table, and finally entered the train rather conscious that two
warming-pans and two newspaper-covered market-baskets are hardly
ordinary or desirable travelling luggage.
A few days later, when cleaning the inside of the dressing-table, the
following letter was found. It had been caught and held by a splinter of
wood under the top of the table, and had evidently lain untouched for
years. It was folded in the old-fashioned way, dated May 12, 1810, and
addressed to Madam Janet Hartington. It read thus:
D^R AND RESPECT^{ED} MOTHER The letter which I wrote you some three
months ago on the s’bj’ct of my proposed marriage was answered by you,
and the answer duly rec^d by me.
The two letters I wrote you since on the same s’bj’ct have rec^d no
answer.
And now it is too late to receive any further advice on the matter,
for I wish to most Respectfully inform you that I married the object
of my choice a week past to-day in Kings Chapel in Boston. There were
but few present, as was Oriana’s wish.
The plans you wrote me, most Respect^{ed} Mother, for the advancement
and future prospects of our family, interested me much, and I quite
concur in them all.
And no one could be more fully fitted to assist me in my career than
my Oriana. Her graceful and ladylike deportment fit her to adorn any
circle no matter how exalted.
She is quite ready to become a most dutifull and obedient daughter to
you and I trust, my D^r Mother, the fact of her being an orphan will
open your heart to her; and then the wish you have always had, viz, to
have a daughter, may thus find its fullfillment.
I know not from what source you obtained the strange advice that her
Father did amass his fortune in the African Slave Trade. I have never
wounded her tender heart by inquiry as to the source of her Fathers
wealth (tho’ ’tis a calling & trade has been followed by many citizens
apparently much respect^{ed}). But the thought of his “ill-gotten
gold” need no further trouble you. Thro’ ill advice and knavery, her
fortune has dwindled to a thousand dollars, and now her wealth is only
in her beauty and her amiable disposition. She has however much good
furniture and china which will grace well our home.
I regret much to hear that my bills and debts in College have cost you
so much, and that the Farm is so run behindhand. This, with the debts
my Father left behind him, make it most advisable for me to give up my
intention to practice as a lawyer, and have decided me to return to
manage your Farm.
It is quite opportune and most Providential that your Farmer is dead,
since he managed so ill.
With your wise instructions and counsels, we can no doubt retrieve the
money that has been lost, and carry out my Grandfathers plans to make
our house and name one of the most powerful in the State.
Thus shall I assume the position in town and county that you always
wished me to take.
We shall leave by coach for Ringe in a week, our household goods and
furnishings to follow us in waggons.
I know, D^r Mother, that you will admire and praise my Oriana, as who
could do otherwise?
I have talked much to her of your aspirations and ambitions, and she
hopes most Respectfully to help to carry out any plans you may have.
With most affectionate greeting from Oriana and myself, I am
Your Loving and Honour^{ed} Son
GEORGE HARTINGTON.
In due time the table was scraped, cleaned, and polished, and with its
cheerful mottled golden color and shining brass handles, was most
thoroughly attractive and satisfying. The pretty Lowestoft china cups
were set on it and used for petty toilet purposes. An old canopied
mirror was hung over it, and every night after I had lighted the candles
in the repaired and resilvered candelabra, I sat there looking at the
china, thinking of the blue-fringed gentians, the old house, of the
lonely empty rooms, the poverty, the dreariness; then of the high hopes
and ideas of George Hartington, and ambitions of his mother, and, above
all, the strange familiarity I had had with my old home.
At last I wrote to the wife at the farm, telling her of the old letter;
asking of the career of George Hartington, his success, his life, his
fate. I thought he must be Anthony’s grandfather or granduncle. The
answer came, written in a stiff, uneven hand, but showing more
intelligence than her conversation: “George and Oriana Hartington were
my husband’s father and mother. My husband is seventy-five years old,
and was their only child. George Hartington died three years after he
was married. My husband remembers his mother as a feeble, sickly woman
who didn’t have much to say on the farm, and seemed always afraid of
Madam Hartington. She died of consumption when he was twelve years old.
That was her china you bought with the O on it. His grandmother lived to
be ninety-two years old. He is not very well this winter, he has a bad
cough. If you know of any good cough medicine, I could buy it with the
money you gave us for the table and china,” etc.
And this is the end of all Madam Hartington’s ambitions—a broken-down,
broken-hearted, childless old man. It is the New England kismet.
Sad often are many of the memories, sad are the pictures, brought to my
mind by my old china. It speaks to me too often of deserted farms, of
unthrifty farmers; of shabby homes, the homes of drunken fathers and
sickly mothers; of rasping young Philistines, haters of old things and
old ways; of miserly old women and extravagant young ones; of gloomy
widowers and miserable bachelors; of the hopeless round of toil of New
England farm-wives, those human beasts of burden, bending grievously
under the heavy load of loneliness and labor; it speaks sadly to me of
the pinched ways and poor living, the _res angusta domi_ too frequently
to be seen, alas! in my beloved New England. All these shadows, however,
are softened and lessened by the lapse of time, just as in my memory the
days of my china hunts have all been sunshiny and bright; it never
rained, nor was it cold nor windy, nor was it ever sultry or dusty when
I have been a china hunting; all china days were Emerson’s
“... charmed days
When the genius of God doth flow.
The wind may alter twenty ways,
A tempest cannot blow;
It may blow north, it still is warm;
Or south, it still is clear;
Or east, it smells like a clover-farm;
Or west, no thunder fear.”
XIX.
CHINA COLLECTIONS
In past years any stray china-lover who wished to see and to learn had
to search well to find any public collections, or even specimens of old
china, in America. In town-halls, in the curiosity shops of eccentric
old women, or in the “museums” of land-stranded old sailors, a few
pieces might be seen—not saved nor shown because they were china, but
because “Parson Boardman, who preached forty-nine years in this town,
owned this tea-set;” or “this china was taken out of the cabin of an
English frigate in 1813;” or “these mugs were used when George
Washington passed through the town.” In this class of discursive and
disjointed collections, though of course in a superior and highly
honored way, might be placed the china of the Museum of the East India
Marine Company in Salem, of whose arrangement Eleanor Putnam wrote, “it
was as if each sea-captain had lounged in and hustled down his
contribution in any convenient vacant space.” In that old museum, as I
remember it a decade ago, elaborate models of Chinese junks and American
merchant vessels bore on their miniature bowsprits strange additions to
their rigging, and shadowed by their dusty hulls queer and varied
trophies, queerer then than now—sharks’ teeth, Turkish pipes,
sandal-wood beads, Italian crucifixes, Peruvian pottery, and South Sea
shells and savage weapons. Teak-wood furniture and miniature palanquins
and pagodas sheltered many curious china treasures which I vaguely
recall, queer in name and shape—nests of egg-shell saki-cups and
saki-bowls galore; ink-stones of green celadon with their accompanying
water-bottles and little cakes of gilded India-ink; perfume flasks of
painted Japanese wares; bottles of purest porcelain for Oriental
hair-oil, or, rather, hair-glue; pottery jars full of unpleasant-looking
mouldy mysteries, which might be preserved fruit or might be mummies;
“plaster boxes” lettered in Chinese; strange triangular bits of blue and
white Persian porcelain “to clean out shoes with;” old Liverpool mugs
taken from a wreck and wildly labelled “from Ceylon;” and, chief of all,
two vast soup-tureens of purest white Canton porcelain, duck-shaped, six
feet in length from beak to tail by _memory’s_ measurement. In the cold
light of recent and more mature inspection these two great East India
birds of good cheer, like many another remembered object of the good old
times, shrank to about half their ancient size; but are still impressive
relics of the great days and great dinners of the old East India Marine
Company, the dinners where, filled to the wings with some hot,
well-peppered Indian broth, the twin tureens graced the board around
which gathered all these old treasure-bringing and treasure-giving Salem
mariners.