A View of the House Showing its Greatest Length 
“The House 
of the Seven Chimneys” 
By C. H. Cl.AUDY 
PART 11 
A nd SO it went. Carpenters, masons and work¬ 
men of all kinds, worked by the day. A 
builder put his foremen over them and bossed 
the job under Mr. Davis’ direction lor a stated sum 
for the work. He, like the plumber, had no interest 
in the work except to make a good job ol it. He 
profited nothing, he lost nothing, by the purchase 
ol materials, by the strikes, by weather, by expired 
contract time. Mr. Davis bought and stored his own 
material, when he could buy cheaper than the builder; 
when the builder could get better prices, he bought, 
and Mr. Davis paid the bill. The house was begun 
as an entirety in 1904 and is not entirely completed 
yet. It is finished entirely in white, inside, white 
paint over white pine, in the Colonial style. All the 
woodwork design is Mr. Davis’ own, and it is all 
hand made. “All the lines are flowing lines” he says. 
“There isn’t a machine made straight line in any 
moulding or carving in the house.” That the result 
is beautiful goes without saying,—that any other 
finish would be incongruous with the exterior and the 
low ceilings, can be seen at a glance. 
It is difficult to pick out particular rooms for de¬ 
tailed description, and, obviously, to attempt to 
describe them all would be impossible. The Studio 
is better shown in the photographs than by any words 
of mine. The dining-room, a large, low ceiling 
apartment (as indeed are all the rooms) with its open 
fireplace is at once cheerful, homelike and appetiz¬ 
ing. The library, next to and opening into the din¬ 
ing-room with its white. Colonial built-in book 
cases, invites both the student and the time-passer, 
just as the bath-rooms attract and beg for use, even 
be who is fresh from the water. In the Old House, 
the green painted, white splashed floors, typical of the 
Cape, have been preserved most carefully, a quaint 
and curious feature. 
The furnishings ? They must be left for some other 
pen than mine, and for an understanding pen as 
well, for the house is filled with the old and the 
curious, the beautiful and tbe unique in furniture and 
furnishings. One curiosity particularly worthy of 
mention is a portrait of Washington, apparently a 
steel engraving, but actually woven on silk; one of 
the first products of the jacquard loom, dating back 
to 1 830. 
Almost all the furniture has been chosen by 
Francis H. Bigelow of Cambridge, whose name is 
known wherever old furniture is known and loved. 
The value of the furnishings of “The House of the 
Seven Chimneys” is hardly to be expressed in figures, 
some of it being priceless. But, as an example, an 
offer of nine bundred dollars for twelve quaint old- 
fashioned dining-room chairs was indignantly re¬ 
fused, and a single old Dutch chest of drawers, in the 
bedroom of one of the ladies of Mr. Davis’ house¬ 
hold, could not be purchased for five hundred 
dollars. 
There is,too, an old-fashioned clock, hanging in the 
entrance hall, not intrinsically of great value, but 
priceless to the owner. It was the anonymous gift 
of the workmen who built the house, and hangs yet, 
11 
