234 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



J^y. i9 J 3 



One of the bed-chambers 



Copyright by G. H. Buek. 



chimney formed the central pillar of the house and about 

 it the rooms were grouped. Very beautiful, indeed, is the 

 paneling which, after the fashion of the day, covered two 

 sides of the room, the remaining walls being plastered and 

 papered. It is woodwork of the sort, experts agree, must 

 have been the work of a ship's carpenter and this well might 

 have been the case, since Easthampton was settled by New 

 Englanders, many of whom were known to have engaged 

 in the occupation of ship building. 



The spirit of the home is there and the spirit of the time 

 as well. Everything is as it should be, and it seems as 

 equally fitting that the grandfather clock in the corner 

 should lend its dignified presence and add its sonorous voice 

 to the scene, as that the slat-backed rocker before the open 

 fire, should welcome with hospitable arms the stranger 

 within the gates, or the ancient spinnet by the window, 

 beckon for a sympathetic touch to press its age-yellowed 

 keys and permit its soul expression. 



Happily, no incongruous note is struck. In all the 

 Colonial treasure gathered to rehabilitate the place, there 

 is nothing to mar the sentiment, nor offend the taste. We 

 should miss, were they not there, the spinning wheel and 

 the Queen Anne chairs, the brass candlesticks on the mantel, 

 the sperm oil lamps on the mahogany stands and the trivet 

 on the hearth, just as we would miss the priceless collection 

 of lustre that glorifies the Colonial cabinet in the corner. 



All these things are beautiful beyond compare, but not 

 so personal to admirers of the man as the fine portraits and 

 other relics that line the walls. Perusing the many auto- 

 graph letters from the poet, dramatist and critic, one comes 

 very close to the magnetic personality of the writer, particu- 



larly in a letter to his sister written on the day of his first 

 appearance at Drury Lane as "Norval" in "Douglass." We 

 come, too, alas, very close to the financial trials that so 

 constantly beset him later in life, in a letter to R. F. Ellison 

 of the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, who was Payne's 

 manager. Undoubtedly the gem of the whole collection is a 

 fine oil painting of Payne, done by A. M. Willard, just be- 

 fore he returned to Tunis as Consul for the last time. 



Full of sympathetic as well as human interest is the col- 

 lection of old theatre programmes hanging in the little 

 room off the kitchen. One of the opera, "Clari or The 

 Maid of Milan," in which "Home, Sweet Home" appeared, 

 stands out more prominently than the rest. That play, 

 founded on the love of home, is symbolical of Payne's 

 success and failure. The opera itself is for the most part 

 forgotten, but Home, Sweet Home, sung by the heroine 

 in a frenzy of grief when she learns she has sacrificed her 

 home for a bauble, still lives. 



So instant was its success, that one week after it was 

 produced all London was singing it, and in the year fol- 

 lowing more than 100,000 copies of it were sold by the 

 publishers, for which the writer received no recognition, 

 not even the imprint of his name on the title page. Many 

 versions of the circumstances in which the poem was written 

 have, from time to time, appeared, but it would seem from 

 Pierre M. Irving in his biography of his great uncle, 

 Washington Irving, a close friend of Payne's and from the 

 writer's own biographers, that none of the spectacular 

 statements was true. The song, according to Irving, was 

 written while Payne was "living in a sky parlor of the 

 Palais Royal" but, though he was in straightened circum- 

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