An Old Town By the Sea | Page 9

a charm, and by no means
exhaust the list. I cannot do more than attempt to describe--and that
very briefly--a few of the typical old houses. On this same Pleasant
Street there are several which we must leave unnoted, with their
spacious halls and carven staircases, their antiquated furniture and old
silver tankards and choice Copleys. Numerous examples of this artist's
best manner are to be found here. To live in Portsmouth without
possessing a family portrait done by Copley is like living in Boston
without having an ancestor in the old Granary Burying-Ground. You
can exist, but you cannot be said to flourish. To make this statement
smooth, I will remark that every one in Portsmouth has a Copley--or
would have if a fair division were made.
In the better sections of the town the houses are kept in such excellent
repair, and have so smart an appearance with their bright green blinds
and freshly painted woodwork, that you are likely to pass many an old
landmark without suspecting it. Whenever you see a house with a
gambrel roof, you may be almost positive that the house is at least a
hundred years old, for the gambrel roof went out of fashion after the

Revolution.
On the corner of Daniel and Chapel streets stands the oldest brick
building in Portsmouth--the Warner House. It was built in 1718 by
Captain Archibald Macpheadris, a Scotchman, as his name indicates, a
wealthy merchant, and a member of the King's Council. He was the
chief projector of one of the earliest iron-works established in America.
Captain Macpheadris married Sarah Wentworth, one of the sixteen
children of Governor John Wentworth, and died in 1729, leaving a
daughter, Mary, whose portrait, with that of her mother, painted by the
ubiquitous Copley, still hangs in the parlor of this house, which is not
known by the name of Captain Macpheadris, but by that of his
son-in-law, Hon. Jonathan Warner, a member of the King's Council
until the revolt of the colonies. "We well recollect Mr. Warner," says
Mr. Brewster, writing in 1858, "as one of the last of the cocked hats. As
in a vision of early childhood he is still before us, in all the dignity of
the aristocratic crown officers. That broad-backed, long-skirted brown
coat, those small-clothes and silk stockings, those silver buckles, and
that cane--we see them still, although the life that filled and moved
them ceased half a century ago."
The Warner House, a three-story building with gambrel roof and
luthern windows, is as fine and substantial an exponent of the
architecture of the period as you are likely to meet with anywhere in
New England. The eighteen-inch walls are of brick brought from
Holland, as were also many of the materials used in the building--the
hearth-stones, tiles, etc. Hewn-stone underpinnings were seldom
adopted in those days; the brick-work rests directly upon the solid walls
of the cellar. The interior is rich in paneling and wood carvings about
the mantel-shelves, the deep-set windows, and along the cornices. The
halls are wide and long, after a by-gone fashion, with handsome
staircases, set at an easy angle, and not standing nearly upright, like
those ladders by which one reaches the upper chambers of a modern
house. The principal rooms are paneled to the ceiling, and have large
open chimney-places, adorned with the quaintest of Dutch files. In one
of the parlors of the Warner House there is a choice store of family
relics--china, silver-plate, costumes, old clocks, and the like. There are

some interesting paintings, too--not by Copley this time. On a broad
space each side of the hall windows, at the head of the staircase, are
pictures of two Indians, life size. They are probably portraits of some of
the numerous chiefs with whom Captain Macphaedris had dealings, for
the captain was engaged in the fur as well as in the iron business. Some
enormous elk antlers, presented to Macpheadris by his red friends, are
hanging in the lower hall.
By mere chance, thirty or forty years ago, some long-hidden paintings
on the walls of this lower hall were brought to light. In repairing the
front entry it became necessary to remove the paper, of which four or
five layers had accumulated. A one place, where several coats had
peeled off cleanly, a horse's hoof was observed by a little girl of the
family. The workman then began removing the paper carefully; first the
legs, then the body of a horse with a rider were revealed, and the
astonished paper-hanger presently stood before a life-size
representation of Governor Phipps on his charger. The workman called
other persons to his assistance, and the remaining portions of the wall
were speedily stripped, laying bare four or five hundred square feet
covered with sketches in color, landscapes, views