234 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



June, 1907 



Copyright, 1902, by Lamson Studio 



The Old Parlor 



phia. The general therefore ordered from the Quaker city 

 what he supposed would he enough bricks for his purpose, 

 hut the builders, miscalculating the thickness of the walls — 

 they are sixteen inches through — the bricks gave out and it 

 was a good six months before operations could proceed. 



'The man who could afford such a house as this one, 

 at a time when buikling materials brought such prices as 

 they did immediately after the Revolutionary War, must 

 needs ha\'e been a person of prominence and property. 

 So, indeed, we find General Wadsworth to have been. 

 Graduated from Harvard in 1769 he was among the first 

 to organize a company to resist the tyranny of the mother 

 country. In the fortification of Roxbury and Dorchester 

 Heights he rendered valuable service, and in 1778 he was 

 appointed acijutant-general of Massachusetts. A year or two 

 later he was placed in command of the 

 troops on the Maine coast. 



All this time, however, the doughty 

 soldier was a citizen of Plymouth, Mass. 

 It was not until 1784 that he proceeded 

 from the Pilgrims' country to Portland, 

 bringing with him his wife (who had been 

 Miss Elizabeth Bartlett, of Plymouth), a 

 lady of fine manners and all womanly 

 virtues, "who was alike his friend and com- 

 forter in hours of trial and the grace and 

 ornament of his house in the days of pros- 

 perity." 



The associations of this house have been 

 almost all those of prosperity. I have a 

 shrewd suspicion that this is one reason the 

 place is so popular. One likes to trace in 

 imagination the many pleasant happenings 

 with which the old furniture and the curious 

 kitchen things have been intimately con- 

 nected, and to recall that the piano, which 

 is still in the parlor at the left of the en- 

 trance hall, was the first ever brought to 

 Portland, and elicited so much admiring 

 curiosity that the country people were wont 

 to stand around the windows, looking in 

 when music was being played. How 



fraught with suggestions of real neighbor- 

 liness and abundant leisure is the anecdote ! 



When the Wadsworth family moved 

 into their fine new house there were already 

 six children, Zilpah, the future mother of 

 the poet, being then a maid of seven or 

 eight. That she had something of the lit- 

 erary gift her distinguished son was to 

 possess to such marked degree is shown by 

 this vivid description she wrote of her 

 father as he looked in the early days of 

 their residence under this fine old roof tree: 

 "Imagine to yourself a man of middle 

 age, well proportioned, with a military air, 

 and who carried himself so truly that many 

 thought him tall. His dress, a bright 

 scarlet coat, buff smallclothes and vest, full 

 ruffled bosom, ruffles over the hands, white 

 stockings, shoes with silver buckles, white 

 cravat bow in front, hair well powdered 

 and tied behind in a club, so called." To 

 this, one has only to add a cocked hat of 

 black felt to get General Peleg Wadsworth 

 exactly as he looks to-day in the portrait 

 which hangs over the mantel-piece of the 

 sitting-room. 



In the stately parlor of this house were 

 married, in 1804, the parents of iVmerica's dearest poet. 

 Zilpah Wadsworth had now grown to be a beautiful and 

 gracious maiden whom Stephen Longfellow, a young Har- 

 vard graduate just beginning the practice of law, accounted 

 himself very fortunate to win for his bride. The Longfellows 

 had for two or three generations lived in Gorham, Me., 

 where father and son were in turn lawyers of prominence 

 and where their old home still stands. The poet's father 

 grew up on this Gorham farm. 



In 1808, the year after the birth of the poet, the newly 

 wed Longfellows definitely took possession of Wadsworth 

 House. General Peleg had the year preceding built another 

 noble mansion for himself — Wadsworth Hall — at Hiram, 

 Me., and had there removed to spend the remainder of his 

 days. The Portland house thus came naturally enough to 



Copyright, 1902, by Lamson Studio 



The Guest Room 



