THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES
The visitor to Salem has no difficulty in finding the House of the Seven
Gables, for any one can direct him there, and he is waylaid by boys who
wish to guide him to it.
His way lies through what was once the court end of the town. This
quarter, long since deserted by fashion--its fine old houses are now
turned into tenements--still retains enough of its ancient state to
arouse the visitor's interest. So his mind is in a most receptive mood
when a final corner takes him into Turner Street, and he descries at its
very end the rear of the ancient mansion, embowered by trees, the long
sweep of its lean-to crowned by a cluster of chimneys.
[Illustration: PLATE V.--The House of the Seven Gables, Salem, Mass.]
The House of the Seven Gables is most pleasantly situated, overlooking
Salem harbor, with a view across the water and of Marblehead in the
distance. The house faces the south. Its east end borders on Turner
Street, crowding down so close to the narrow sidewalk that the
picturesque sign over the shop door swings just over the heads of the
passers-by. At the back of the house the lean-to already mentioned
slopes down to the yard, while to the west the land extends beyond the
garden to the next street.
The steeply sloping roof of the ancient mansion, its sharp, pointed
gables, its gray, weather-beaten clapboards, the faded red of its brick
chimneys, all attract the visitor. Romance speaks to him from the tiny
casements and, dreaming that he shall find Miss Hepzibah herself behind
the counter, he opens the shop door and hurriedly enters. The bell over
the door jangles his welcome.
It would be hard to find a tinier place than that little shop. And how
full it is of everything: of toys, of candies, of baskets and rag mats
and antiques and bits of embroidery and, best of all, quaint Jimcrows,
the gingerbread men so thoroughly appreciated by Miss Hepzibah's young
customer.
The present presiding genius of the little shop stands behind a high,
narrow counter surmounted by a very old, quaint, glass show-case. She is
a lady of far more charm and tact than was poor Miss Hepzibah, with much
of interest to tell about her wares, and answers with great patience
questions about the house and the families who lived in it.
The house was built in 1669 by John Turner, a Salem merchant, and was
successively owned by his son and grandson, both John Turners. The third
John Turner sold the house in 1782 to Captain Samuel Ingersoll.
Hawthorne's connection with the house begins with the Ingersolls, who
were his kinsfolk. Mrs. Ingersoll was a Hawthorne and a cousin of
Hawthorne's father.
Her daughter Susannah was eighteen years older than Hawthorne, although
of the same generation. She inherited the estate while still a young
woman and was at first fond of society, but after an unfortunate love
affair she became a recluse. She spent a long life in gloomy retirement
in the ancient mansion with no companion except her under-witted maid.
Her young cousin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, was one of the few men allowed to
cross her jealously guarded threshold.
Miss Ingersoll's old age was cheered by an adopted son, a boy of
mysterious birth, supposed by some to be the child of her servant.
Whoever he was, Miss Ingersoll was devoted to him. She gave him a fine
education and started him in life as a clergyman. He was known at first
as Horace Conelly but later took the name of Ingersoll. Miss Ingersoll
left him her entire fortune, even her family homestead, the House of the
Seven Gables. But unfortunately he proved to be a man of very weak
character. He dissipated the fortune, and in 1879 the house was sold for
his debts.
In the next few years the house changed owners many times, until in 1883
it came into the possession of the Upton family, who occupied it for
twenty-five years. In 1908 it was bought for the use of the settlement
to which it gives its name.
In 1909 the house was repaired and fitted up for settlement work, and
while it was under repair, many of the original features, or traces of
them, were discovered. During its two hundred and forty years of
existence some of its gables and its lean-to had been taken off, the
overhang closed in, and the secret staircase taken down. A careful
restoration was made of all these missing features, a matter of great
interest to architects and antiquarians and even to the casual visitor.
[Illustration: Copyright. 1910, by C. O. Emmerton.]
[Illustration: Copyright, 1910, by C. O. Emmerton.
PLATE VI.--Hallway, House of the Seven Gables; Hepzibah's Shop, House of
the Seven Gables.]
Leaving the little shop, the visitor enters directly the old kitchen.
This is a small room sheathed with pine boards put on perpendicularly,
after the fashion of the earliest times, so as to form a simple
pattern. This special pattern is peculiar to the House of the Seven
Gables.
An immense fireplace occupies nearly the whole of one side of the room.
It is filled with old-fashioned cooking utensils and illustrates the
evolution which has taken place along this line. The pots and kettles
are swung from a long iron bar placed well up in the chimney. (The crane
with which we are all familiar is simply a later development of this
primitive bar.) There is a brick oven built into the fireplace, also a
Dutch oven, which is a pot with a rim around the cover to hold the hot
coals; and, the last step in evolution before the cook-stove, we find
the tin kitchen standing in its place before the andirons.
The most precious of all the furnishings of the fireplace is an
old-fashioned toaster from which Hawthorne has had many a slice of
toast. Close to the fireplace is a panelled oak chest as old as, if not
older, than the house. Flanking the chest is the top of a highboy, which
once belonged to Miss Ingersoll and may have been bought of the Turners
with the house. As Miss Ingersoll was a conservative person, it was
probably not until after her day that the highboy was divided, and the
top part set on the floor with feet of its own.
Opposite the highboy is an old-fashioned kitchen dresser, part of which
was found in the house, and the rest designed to match. Its shelves now
contain samples of crockery and old salt glaze, with specimens of
Bennington and tortoise-shell ware. If the visitor is up on such
matters, he will have noticed that certain articles in the room are of
much later date than others. He is then told that the idea in furnishing
the house is to make it look as an old, conservative Salem house would
have looked in 1840, the period of the story. That is to say, there is
practically no furniture later than 1840, and most of the pieces are
much earlier--survivors, so to speak, of the many periods through which
the house has passed. The later and more elegant pieces of furniture
(generally speaking, mahogany of about 1800) are to be found in the
parlor and dining-room, while the earlier pieces of walnut, cherry,
pine, and oak have been relegated to the kitchen and attic; the same is
to be said of the china--Lowestoft and lustre supplanting the earlier
wares in the parlor and dining-room.
[Illustration: Copyright, 1910, by C. O. Emmerton.]
[Illustration: Copyright, 1910, by C. O. Emmerton.
PLATE VII.--Dining Room, House of the Seven Gables; Parlor, House of the
Seven Gables.]
With the determination to note this evolution in household furnishing,
the visitor continues on his tour of the house. He leaves the kitchen by
a dark, narrow passage. A door at its end admits him to a large,
sunny, low-ceiled room, which has always been used as a combination
dining and sitting-room. The Turners called this room "the hall," a term
the early settlers brought with them from England. The Ingersolls called
it "the keeping room." To the settlement residents to-day, it is simply
the dining-room. It is certainly most attractive with its rare, old,
white painted panelling and old-fashioned furniture. The sideboard,
dining-table, and secretary are fine old pieces of mahogany. The chairs
are of the Windsor pattern. On the wall are pictures of clipper ships
and foreign ports and one portrait of a rather grim old gentleman. Under
the portrait is the dinner-wagon and a red lacquer tray, once the
property of Miss Ingersoll.
In the novel this room is called "the parlor of more moderate size" in
contrast to the grand reception room. And here, more than anywhere else,
the scene of the story is laid. For this was the room where Colonel
Pyncheon was discovered dead by his little grandson, and here after many
years that grandson received Matthew Maule the carpenter and sent for
his daughter Alice to join them. And this was the room that Miss
Hepzibah Pyncheon used as the living-room, and where she and her
brother Clifford and her little cousin Phoebe ate their meals under
their ancestor's frowning portrait. Here it was that Judge Pyncheon came
and bullied Hepzibah and sent her to find her brother. The story tells
how poor Hepzibah, sadly against her will, goes over the house looking
for Clifford. But she does not find him in his room, and when she
hurries back to the living-room, Clifford himself comes out of it and
points to the judge, who is sitting dead in his chair. Hawthorne does
not explain in the novel how Clifford left his room and got down to the
living-room, but the house itself offers an explanation.
Beside the fireplace in the living-room is a round-topped door opening
into a brick-lined closet. Entering the closet the guide opens a secret
door, revealing a mysterious staircase by which the visitor mounts
apparently right into the heart of the huge central chimney. The
staircase is very steep and narrow and makes many a turn. Finally, the
door at the top opens, and the visitor steps out into Clifford's room.
The door closes with a snap behind him. The visitor looks round but sees
only the pine sheathing with the pattern peculiar to the House of the
Seven Gables.
In response to the question: "Why was the secret staircase built?" the
guide confesses that no one knows. There have been many surmises. Some
have thought it was a refuge from the Indians. Others have fancied it
was for purposes of smuggling. The most probable explanation seems to be
that it was a temporary hiding-place in case of a recurrence of the
witchcraft delusion. About 1889 Mr. Upton began to take down the great
central chimney and then discovered the secret staircase, which was
rebuilt in 1909 from his description. It looks so old that the visitor
can hardly believe that it is only a very exact reproduction of the
original.
Clifford's room is only a small attic chamber with a mahogany bed and
bureau and an attractive set of painted chairs, which belonged in the
House of the Seven Gables but were given away at the time the house was
sold for Horace Ingersoll's debts. All the furniture was scattered at
that time, but since then many pieces have found their way back, either
by gift or purchase.
[Illustration: Copyright, 1910, by C. O. Emmerton.
PLATE VIII.--Attic, House of the Seven Gables]
The visitor leaves Clifford's room and makes his way into the open
attic, for he came up two stories by the secret staircase and is now
under the sharply pointed roof and surrounded by trunks, chests, and
bandboxes. This is a good place to understand the structure of the
house. The main building had at first just two gables in front and one
at each end; then a wing was built on in front, covering one of the
gables, which was largely cut away. This wing had three gables, and the
porch, which was built in the angle of the wing and the main house, was
roofed by another gable. An old plan of the house shows a wing built on
to the lean-to in the rear, which was probably roofed by another gable;
so the house in the time of the first two John Turners probably had
eight gables. It seems likely that the third John Turner took off the
porch gable, which must certainly have been very troublesome, as its
position made it a pocket for the ice and snow. If we omit the porch
gable, assuming that it was gone long before the Ingersolls bought the
house, we find that the rest correspond very closely to Hawthorne's
description of them as they are mentioned in different parts of the
novel.
The stump of the cut-off gable is a great object of interest in the
attic, as is also a piece of the old front door, which is studded with
nails after the fashion of the early colonial days.
One flight below the attic is the great chamber, Phoebe's room in
the story. This splendid, great, sunny room has fine panelling, dating
from about 1720, and good examples of early furniture. To give an idea
of how the room looked when first built the guide moves aside the Queen
Anne mirror and opens a small door behind it, cut in the wall of the
room. This reveals one of the great supporting posts, which is roughly
carved in mediaeval manner. This post, with its companion beams and
posts, once stood out in the room, but since the panelling was put in,
that is nearly two hundred years ago, it has been hidden from sight.
This silent witness indicates the great age of the house, which has
outlived so many styles and fashions. Another flight below is the parlor
or "grand reception room," as it was called.
In the story it is described as unfurnished--an empty room that Miss
Hepzibah was too poor to heat, where Clifford took his exercise on rainy
days. Into this room the hero Holgrave drew little Phoebe, that she
might not enter the living-room and have the shock of discovering Judge
Pyncheon sitting there dead. One forgets about the story in admiring the
very happy color scheme of this finely proportioned room. The wall-paper
is gray, a reproduction of some wall-paper found in the house. The
graceful little classical groups indicate that it was designed in the
early part of the last century. Against the gray wall-paper and fine
white painted panelling, the red curtains at the three windows are seen
in pleasant contrast. They are a wonderfully soft yet brilliant red,
with a beautiful brocaded design. A set of Sheraton chairs covered with
black figured hair-cloth give character to the room, and the warm Turkey
rug on the floor helps to carry out the color scheme.
The fireplace in this room is of especial interest. It is large, but the
guide opens a wood closet and shows that the original fireplace was very
much larger. At the right of the fireplace opens a quaintly panelled
door, disclosing a buffet with a carved shell overhead and shelves
crowded with delicate and beautiful old china, while on the floor of the
closet an array of ginger jars reminds one of the Salem ships that
brought home such good things from the East. One is also reminded of the
East by the lacquered work-box, chess-board, and teapoys. In front of a
slant-top desk stands Hawthorne's favorite chair. It looks so
comfortable that we can readily believe that he would select it when
making a call on his cousin.
Her portrait looks down on the chair. Hers is an unusual face, striking
though hardly beautiful. Was she the original of Miss Hepzibah? Her
lonely life in this old, gabled house, the wealth of affection she
bestowed on a weak and selfish man, certainly suggest that Hawthorne had
his cousin in mind when he drew this character.
After a lingering inspection of the parlor, which looks so homelike
because, like the dining-room, it is really lived in by the settlement
residents, the visitor passes out the front door to study the exterior
of the house and enjoy the old-fashioned garden.
The first object of interest is the overhanging second story. The
"overhang," as it is called, was closed in, probably for a century or
more, simply because overhangs had gone out of fashion. It was
accidentally discovered when the house was repaired by the carpenter,
who was examining the soundness of the sills. Some of the old clapboards
can still be seen, and a small piece of the drops which originally
ornamented the corner posts. The present drops are reproductions, except
a bit of the old drops that were left to nail to.
At the end of the garden, which is bright with old-fashioned flowers,
stands the counting-house. This is a small building found on the estate
in use as a wood-shed. Its age and previous history are not known, but
as it is of the same size and shape as the old counting-house mentioned
in the inventories of the Turner family, it has been furnished to
represent it. There is the master's desk, a wonderful affair with many
secret drawers, the clerk's desk, and armchairs, models of ships, a
barometer, a telescope, etc.
Adjoining the counting-house is a grape arbor, where the visitor can
refresh himself with a cup of tea, and while he sits there enjoy a view
of the harbor across the garden. On his left is the House of the Seven
Gables, and on his right is another old house used for the settlement
clubs and classes. It is the Hathaway house, dating from 1683, but that
is another story.