Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 7.djvu/197

 THE WARNER HOME AT PORl'SMOUTH.

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��than loveliness. She was a grand and gallant dame, but not a gracious one, I wot.

Lady Macpheadris, in the tenth year of her widowhood, became the second wife of George Jaffrey, Esq., and went to be the mistress of his mansion, now known as the Jaffrey house on Daniel Street, only a few steps from her former residence. Judge Jaffrey was one of the large men of his day, and kept an open house and coach and servants. He died in May, 1749. His wife sur- vived him nearly thirty years, living in widowhood in the old house with her stepson, Hon. George Jaffrey, 3d, his majesty's councillor.

Her daughter. Lady Warner, was a beauty. She is not so haughty looking as her mother, but a superb and stately dame withal. Her type of loveliness is rare, and the fascinating beauty of her face haunts one like a dream. Like Spartan Helen, she seems

•'A daughter of the gods, divinely tall. And most divinely fair."

Her eyes are brown, full, large and soft ; her rich red lips are sweetly smil- ing ; her nose is slightly aquiline, just enough to give character to the face, and is very handsome. Her silky brown hair, lustrous and abundant, is arranged like a coronet upon her head and adorned with a string of pearls. She is dressed in a robe of light silk, low breasted, with waves of lace about the neck and sweeping over the arms, whose fairness and shapely outline rival those of the Vandyke and Lely beau- ties at Hampton Court.

A fair young girl with blue eyes and flossy golden hair, smiles out from a gilded frame between these two statelv dames. This too is by Copley, and is the picture of Mary, Colonel Warner's daughter by his first wife. .So here are three generations side by side. There are six Copley's in this room. No house in Portsmouth has more or better examples of that artist's art. We can only speak of one more.

On the opposite side of the wall gazes down a portly, John-Bull-looking

��gentleman, with the peruke, small clothes, voluminous waistcoat and laced cuffs of George the Second's time. We suspect at once that this stout, well-conditioned gendeman is one of the ancient masters of the house. But we are mistaken. It is the elder Warner, the councillor, Daniel, who died in 1779. There is nothing peculiar in his external appearance, save perhaps a general well-to-do full- ness of person, an air of pleasurable self-satisfaction and contentment. Ev- erything about him is full and round, neck and cheeks, chin and hands. He looks like a comfortable Hamburg ship owner or captain, but there is an air of poHshed ease about him which be- speaks the gentleman of the old school.

Of him who was so long the master of the house there is no portrait in his own residence. There is, however, a portrait of him by Copley in the Bos- ton Museum of Fine Arts, which I have seen. If that is to be depended upon, and there is no doubt of it not being a true likeness, Hon. Jonathan Warner was a strikingly handsome man. Tall, slender, erect, dressed richly in a garb of gray broadcloth, with a frank, fearless, courteous face, he is the beau ideal of the patrician gentleman. His face has a ruddy color as if flushed by generous quaffs of Madeira. His eyes are dark and piercing, his nose aqui- line, h"s forehead high and full ; his lips curl slightly and are very hand- some, his hair is powdered and he wears a queue. Such was the gentle- man in honor of whom the town in Merrimack county, the former Ames- bury, took its name.

We leave the ancient parlor with regret, and ascend the noble stairway over which in the olden time have passed the light feet of many a grace- ful dame of the old regime. Three of them could walk abreast up its low in- clination with the hooped petticoats of the period and not be crowded. There are some interesting pictures on the walls — not by Copley this time. At the head of the stairs on the broad space each side of the hall windows

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