Part 2 (1/2)
The carriage visitor--and in the old days all the Royall guests came under this head--either alighted by the front entrance or pa.s.sed by the broad drive under the shade of the fine old elms around into the courtyard paved with small white pebbles. The driveway has now become a side street, and what was once an enclosed garden of half an acre or more, with walks, fruit, and a summer-house at the farther extremity, is now the site of modern dwellings.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SUMMER-HOUSE, ROYALL ESTATE, MEDFORD, Ma.s.s.]
This summer-house, long the favourite resort of the family and their guests, was a veritable curiosity in its way. Placed upon an artificial mound with two terraces, and reached by broad flights of red sandstone steps, it was architecturally a model of its kind. Hither, to pay their court to the daughters of the house, used to come George Erving and the young Sir William Pepperell, and if the dilapidated walls (now taken down, but still carefully preserved) could speak, they might tell of many an historic love tryst. The little house is octagonal in form, and on its bell-shaped roof, surmounted by a cupola, there poises what was originally a figure of Mercury. At present, however, the statue, bereft of both wings and arms, cannot be said greatly to resemble the das.h.i.+ng G.o.d.
The exterior of the summer-house is highly ornamented with Ionic pilasters, and taken as a whole is quaintly ruinous. It is interesting to discover that it was utility that led to the elevation of the mound, within which was an ice-house! And to get at the ice the slaves went through a trap-door in the floor of this Greek structure!
Isaac Royall, the builder of the fine old mansion, did not long live to enjoy his n.o.ble estate, but he was succeeded by a second Isaac, who, though a ”colonel,” was altogether inclined to take more care for his patrimony than for his king. When the Revolution began, Colonel Royall fell upon evil times. Appointed a councillor by mandamus, he declined serving ”from timidity,” as Gage says to Lord Dartmouth. Royall's own account of his movements after the beginning of ”these troubles,” is such as to confirm the governor's opinion.
He had prepared, it seems, to take pa.s.sage for the West Indies, intending to embark from Salem for Antigua, but having gone into Boston the Sunday previous to the battle of Lexington, and remained there until that affair occurred, he was by the course of events shut up in the town. He sailed for Halifax very soon, still intending, as he says, to go to Antigua, but on the arrival of his son-in-law, George Erving, and his daughter, with the troops from Boston, he was by them persuaded to sail for England, whither his other son-in-law, Sir William Pepperell (grandson of the hero of Louisburg), had preceded him. It is with this young Sir William Pepperell that our story particularly deals.
The first Sir William had been what is called a ”self-made man,” and had raised himself from the ranks of the soldiery through native genius backed by strength of will. His father is first noticed in the annals of the Isles of Shoals. The mansion now seen in Kittery Point was built, indeed, partly by this oldest Pepperell known to us, and partly by his more eminent son. The building was once much more extensive than it now appears, having been some years ago shortened at either end. Until the death of the elder Pepperell, in 1734, the house was occupied by his own and his son's families. The lawn in front reached to the sea, and an avenue a quarter of a mile in length, bordered by fine old trees, led to the neighbouring house of Colonel Sparhawk, east of the village church.
The first Sir William, by his will, made the son of his daughter Elizabeth and of Colonel Sparhawk, his residuary legatee, requiring him at the same time to relinquish the name of Sparhawk for that of Peperell. Thus it was that the baronetcy, extinct with the death of the hero of Louisburg, was revived by the king, in 1774, for the benefit of this grandson.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ROYALL HOUSE, MEDFORD, Ma.s.s.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: PEPPERELL HOUSE, KITTERY, MAINE.]
In the Ess.e.x Inst.i.tute at Salem, is preserved a two-thirds length picture of the first Sir William Pepperell, painted in 1751 by Smibert, when the baronet was in London. Of this picture, Hawthorne once wrote the humourous description which follows: ”Sir William Pepperell, in coat, waistcoat and breeches, all of scarlet broadcloth, is in the cabinet of the Society; he holds a general's truncheon in his right hand, and points his left toward the army of New Englanders before the walls of Louisburg. A bomb is represented as falling through the air--it has certainly been a long time in its descent.”
The young William Pepperell was graduated from Cambridge in 1766, and the next year married the beautiful Elizabeth Royall. In 1774 he was chosen a member of the governor's council. But when this council was reorganised under the act of Parliament, he fell into disgrace because of his loyalty to the king. On November 16, 1774, the people of his own county (York), pa.s.sed at Wells a resolution in which he was declared to have ”forfeited the confidence and friends.h.i.+p of all true friends of American liberty, and ought to be detested by all good men.”
Thus denounced, the baronet retired to Boston, and sailed, shortly before his father-in-law's departure, for England. His beautiful lady, one is saddened to learn, died of smallpox ere the vessel had been many days out, and was buried at Halifax. In England, Sir William was allowed 500 per annum by the British government, and was treated with much deference. He was the good friend of all refugees from America, and entertained hospitably at his pleasant home. His private life was irreproachable, and he died in Portman Square, London, in December, 1816, at the age of seventy. His vast possessions and landed estate in Maine were confiscated, except for the widow's dower enjoyed by Lady Mary, relict of the hero of Louisburg, and her daughter, Mrs. Sparhawk.
Colonel Royall, though he acted not unlike his son-in-law, Sir William, has, because of his vacillation, far less of our respect than the younger man in the matter of his refusal to cast in his lot with that of the Revolution. In 1778 he was publicly proscribed and formally banished from Ma.s.sachusetts. He thereupon took up his abode in Kensington, Middles.e.x, and from this place, in 1789, he begged earnestly to be allowed to return ”home” to Medford, declaring he was ”ever a good friend of the Province,” and expressing the wish to marry again in his own country, ”where, having already had one good wife, he was in hopes to get another, and in some degree repair his loss.” His prayer was, however, refused, and he died of smallpox in England, October, 1781. By his will, Harvard College was given a tract of land in Worcester County, for the foundation of a professors.h.i.+p, which still bears his name.
It is not, however, to be supposed that in war time so fine a place as the Royall mansion should have been left unoccupied. When the yeomen began pouring into the environs of Boston, encircling it with a belt of steel, the New Hamps.h.i.+re levies pitched their tents in Medford. They found the Royall mansion in the occupancy of Madam Royall and her accomplished daughters, who willingly received Colonel John Stark into the house as a safeguard against insult, or any invasion of the estate the soldiers might attempt. A few rooms were accordingly set apart for the use of the bluff old ranger, and he, on his part, treated the family of the deserter with considerable respect and courtesy. It is odd to think that while the stately Royalls were living in one part of this house, General Stark and his plucky wife, Molly, occupied quarters under the same roof.
The second American general to be attracted by the luxury of the Royall mansion was that General Lee whose history furnishes material for a separate chapter. General Lee it was to whom the house's echoing corridors suggested the name, Hobgoblin Hall. So far as known, however, no inhabitant of the Royall house has ever been disturbed by strange visions or frightful dreams. After Lee, by order of Was.h.i.+ngton, removed to a house situated nearer his command, General Sullivan, attracted, no doubt, by the superior comfort of the old country-seat, laid himself open to similar correction by his chief. In these two cases it will be seen Was.h.i.+ngton enforced his own maxim that a general should sleep among his troops.
In 1810, the Royall mansion came into the possession of Jacob Tidd, in whose family it remained half a century, until it had almost lost its ident.i.ty with the timid old colonel and his kin. As ”Mrs. Tidd's house”
it was long known in Medford. The place was subsequently owned by George L. Barr, and by George C. Nichols, from whose hands it pa.s.sed to that of Mr. Geer, the present owner. To be sure, it has sadly fallen from its high estate, but it still remains one of the most interesting and romantic houses in all New England, and when, as happens once or twice a year, the charming ladies of the local patriotic society powder their hair, don their great-grandmother's wedding gowns and entertain in the fine old rooms, it requires only a slight gift of fancy to see Sir William Pepperell's lovely bride one among the gay throng of fair women.
MOLLY STARK'S GENTLEMAN-SON
Of the quaint ancestral homes still standing in the old Granite State, none is more picturesque or more interesting from the historical view-point than the Stark house in the little town of Dunbarton, a place about five miles' drive out from Concord, over one of those charming country roads, which properly make New Hamps.h.i.+re the summer and autumn Mecca of those who have been ”long in populous city pent.” Rather oddly, this house has, for all its great wealth of historical interest, been little known to the general public. The Starks are a conservative, as well as an old family, and they have never seen fit to make of their home a public show-house. Yet those who are privileged to visit Dunbarton and its chief boast, this famous house, always remember the experience as a particularly interesting one. Seldom, indeed, can one find in these days a house like this, which, for more than one hundred years, has been occupied by the family for whom it was built, and through all the changes and chances of temporal affairs has preserved the characteristics of revolutionary times.
Originally Dunbarton was Starkstown. An ancestor of this family, Archibald Stark, was one of the original proprietors, owning many hundred acres, not a few of which are still in the Starks' possession.
Just when and by whom the place received the name of the old Scottish town and royal castle on the Clyde, no historian seems able to state with definiteness, but that the present Dunbarton represents only a small part of the original triangular towns.h.i.+p, all are agreed. Of the big landowner, Archibald Stark, the General John Stark of our Revolution was a son.
Another of the original proprietors of Dunbarton was a certain Captain Caleb Page, whose name still clings to a rural neighbourhood of the towns.h.i.+p, a crossroads section pointed out to visitors as Page's Corner.
And it was to Elizabeth Page, the bright and capable daughter of his father's old friend and neighbour, that the doughty John Stark was married in August, 1758, while at home on a furlough. The son of this marriage was called Caleb, after his maternal grandfather, and he it was who built the imposing old mansion of our story.
Caleb Stark was a very remarkable man. Born at Dunbarton, December 3, 1759, he was present while only a lad at the battle of Bunker Hill, standing side by side with some of the veteran rangers of the French war, near the rail fence, which extended from the redoubt to the beach of the Mystic River. In order to be at this scene of conflict, the boy had left home secretly some days before, mounted on his own horse, and armed only with a musket. After a long, hard journey, he managed to reach the Royall house in Medford, which was his father's headquarters at the time, the very night before the great battle. And the general, though annoyed at his son's manner of coming, recognised that the lad had done only what a Stark must do at such a time, and permitted him to take part in the next day's fight.