304 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



November, 1906 



ITH the single exception of Mt. Vernon 

 there is probably in all America no Colonial 

 house of more intrinsic interest than the 

 Dorothy Q House in Quincy, Mass., which 

 the Colonial Dames of the Old Bay State 

 bought about two years ago and now main- 

 tain as a show-place for historical and other pilgrims. Mrs. 

 Barrett Wendell, of Boston, is president of the ladies in 

 charge of the old 

 roof-tree, and Miss 

 Elizabeth W. Per- 

 kins is the chairman 

 of the house com- 

 mittee through 

 whose care and 

 good taste the col- 

 lecting has been 

 done. To these two 

 is due great credit 

 for the well-nigh 

 perfect manner in 

 which the house has 

 been made fresh 

 and attractive with- 

 out sacrificing in the 

 slightest the tradi- 

 tions of Colonial 

 architecture or do- 

 ing violence to any 

 one of its romantic 

 associations. 



The Dorothy Q House is almost as old as the 

 Commonwealth itself — the rear part was built in 1636 — 

 and is associated with many of the distinguished men 

 and women who made the Commonwealth and estab- 

 lished its fame. The estate passed out of the hands of 

 the Quincys a century ago; but in Colonial times almost 

 all the eminent members of that race were either born 

 there or lived there part of their days. John Adams and 

 John Quincy Adams frequently visited the inmates of 

 this home, and its hospitable roof has sheltered many 

 others known to fame, such as Sir Harry Vane, Judge 

 Sewall, Benjamin Franklin and Sir Harry Frankland. 



Visitors who to-day go to Quincy and seek out this 

 venerable mansion find much of interest to them, even if 

 they be quite ignorant of the historic side of the house. 

 None the less I propose here to discuss the various rooms 

 in the light of the hallowed traditions with which they 

 are indissolubly linked. Otherwise the quaint furniture 

 might just as well be in the show-rooms of an enter- 



The Dorothy Q House 



prising dealer in antiques. Let us begin with the garden, 

 here an integral part of the house, as all Colonial gardens 

 were. Approaching from the street one walks back several 

 hundred yards through magnolia and mulberry trees set off 

 with rhododendron, along a narrow path neatly bordered 

 with a relic of that famous box upon which Dorothy Q 

 dried her laces nearly two hundred years ago. At the left 

 is the brook which the town of Quincy has lately dammed 



up and over which 

 there will soon be 

 placed a rustic 

 bridge such as was 

 there when Agnes 

 Surriage came to 

 the house with her 

 handsome Sir Harry 

 Frankland, and the 

 whole party fished 

 for eels, which they 

 merrily cooked for 

 supper. 



At the left as one 

 enters the noble 

 front door is the 

 parlor, with its re- 

 nowned Venus and 

 Cupid wall - paper, 

 which was brought 

 from Paris ex- 

 pressly for the wed- 

 ding of John Han- 

 cock and his Dorothy Q. The design shows 

 double panels upon which very natural-looking Birds of 

 Paradise disport themselves. In one Cupid appears to 

 be wooing the shy Venus; in the other she has dispatched 

 him with an affirmative answer, and he is proceeding 

 happily away through pendent wreaths of red flowers. 

 It seems a pity that paper so eminently fitted to nuptial 

 rites should not have graced the Hancock wedding after 

 all. But English spies were keeping a keen lookout for 

 Patriot Hancock about that time, and he was obliged to 

 go into hiding in the Lexington parsonage (now known 

 as the Clark House) t where his father had been born. 

 To visit him his aunt, Mine. Lydia Hancock, and his 

 fiancee, Dorothy, took coach April 18, 177^; and it was 

 the resultant happy meeting which Paul Revere inter- 

 rupted when, having ridden for his life to warn Hancock 

 that the British were approaching, he arrived in Lexing- 

 ton about midnight of that memorable day. Hancock 

 had, of course, to flee again; the ladies meanwhile with- 



