Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 7.djvu/196

172 THE GRANITE MONTHLY. tured monument in St. John's church-yard, only a few rods from his home.

The Warner house is situated at the corner of Daniel and Chapel Streets. Though probably the oldest brick building in Portsmouth, it is apparently as sound and fresh and in as good repair as though it had been erected within twenty years. Proportioned after the commodious style of the period, its lofty roof and towering chimneys must have made no unimportant features in the landscape during the last century before it was crowded up so close by inferior buildings. The stories are very high for the time in which it was built, the whole height of the building being about fifty feet.

The ponderous door swings open at the summons of the heavy brazen knocker, brought by Captain Macpheadris from England. We enter a deep, wide hall, built after a goneby fashion, sixteen feet wide and forty-four feet long, extending the whole length of the house. It looks baronial in its grandeur and magnificence. The floor is of oak blocked to represent squares. The walls are rich with paneling and wood-carving. The staircase is a grand affair, set at an easy angle and about seven feet wide. In the hall-way stands a large mahogany table used by the Warners, and several of the old family chairs.

Passing under the enormous antlers of an elk, presented to Captain Macpheadris by his Indian friends, and which have hung there since, we enter the door at the right hand and step into the parlor. The room is nearly square, twenty by twenty-two feet, with dadoed walls, brown and dingy with age, and deep seats in the windows. It is rich in portraits and stately antique furniture. In this one room hang three generations, — grandmother, mother and daughter, — painted by Copley. It is told of a descendant of the famous painter, that once when visiting Portsmouth she called to see the portraits (each of which would be a precious heirloom and guarantee to its possessor a patent of aristocracy). She admired them greatly and expressed a wish to add them to her collection of Copley's. When her desire was made known to the owner, he answered: " Tell Madame I regret to be unable to oblige her, for as she values the pictures as work of her ancestor, no less do we value them as excellent portraits of ours."

The room in which these portraits hang is wainscotted throughout, and in walking into it one seems to have stepped back a hundred years. The large open chimney-place is decorated with Dutch tiles, unique in character, representing monsters of the deep, galleons and ships, and fat, ludicrous mermaids. Everything is ancient and antique in the room except the modern lambrequins and lace curtains. It even smells of antiquity, and you almost expect to see starting up to welcome you one of those courtly councillors or patrician dames who in the long ago filled the room with the splendor of their presence. They fill it still, for there is nothing in the room like the portraits — Copley's choicest productions — they have as fresh and lifelike an appearance as though painted but yesterday. They seem to smile right out of their frames, and you can all but hear their satin gowns rustle.

Just where the light strikes in a broad band, there hangs the portrait of the first mistress of the mansion. Lady Macpheadris. She is a stately, haughty-looking dame, dressed in the graceful costume of the time — looped petticoat, high-peaked stays, yard long waists, figured satins, flowing sleeves, and the hair plastered back a la Pompadour. Her features are a little hard and stern, and the blackness of her hair seems to shadow and darken her face. But there is an earnestness and force in the keen dark eyes, looking straight out of the canvas, which impresses one. Doubtless in her youth Sarah Wentworth was beautiful, beauty was the natural dower of the Wentworth race, but in the woman of fifty-five there is more dignity than beauty, more pride