American Adventures Part 5

It was with the generous purpose of "showing" us that a Baltimore friend of ours called for us one day with his motor car and was presently wafting us over the good oiled roads of Maryland, through sweet, rolling country, which seemed to have been made to be ridden over upon horseback.

It was autumn, but though the chill of northern autumn was in the air, the coloring was not so high in key as in New York or New England, the foliage being less brilliant, but rich with subtle harmonies of brown and green, blending softly together as in a faded tapestry, and giving the landscape an expression of brooding tenderness.

After pa.s.sing through Ellicott City, an old, shambling town quite out of character with its new-sounding name, which has such a western ring to it, we traversed for several miles the old Frederick Turnpike--formerly a national highway between East and West--swooping up and down over a series of little hills and vales, and at length turned off into a private road winding through a venerable forest, which was like an old Gothic cathedral with its pavement of brown leaves and its tree-trunk columns, tall, gray, and slender.

When we had progressed for perhaps a mile, we emerged upon a slight eminence commanding a broad view of meadow and of woodland, and in turn commanded by a great house.

The house was of buff-colored brick. It was low and very long, with wings extending from its central structure like beautiful arms flung wide in welcome, and at the end of each a building like an ornament balanced in an outstretched hand. The graceful central portico, rising by several easy steps from the driveway level, the long line of cornice, the window sashes, the delicate wooden railing surmounting the roof, the charming little tower which so gracefully held its place above the geometrical center of the house, the bell tower crowning one wing at its extremity--all these were white.

No combination of colors can be lovelier, in such a house, than yellow-buff and white, provided they be brightened by some notes of green; and these notes were not lacking, for several aged elms, occupying symmetrical positions with regard to the house, seemed to gaze down upon it with the adoration of a group of mothers, aunts, and grandmothers, as they held their soft draperies protectively above it.

The green of the low terrace--called a "haha," supposedly with reference to the mirth-provoking possibilities of an accidental step over the edge--did not reach the base of the buff walls, but was lost in a fringe of cl.u.s.tering shrubbery, from which patches of l.u.s.trous English ivy clambered upward over the brick, to lay strong, mischievous fingers upon the blinds of certain second-story windows. The blinds were of course green; green blinds being as necessary to an American window as eyelashes to an eye.

Immediately before the portico and centering upon it the drive swung in a s.p.a.cious circle, from which there broke, at a point directly opposite the portico, an avenue, straight and long as a rifle range, and lovely as the loveliest of New England village greens. Down the middle of this broad way, between gra.s.s borders each as wide as a great boulevard, and double rows of patriarchal trees, ran a road which, in the old days, continued straight to Annapolis, thirty or more miles away, where was the town house of the builder of this manor. As it stands to-day the avenue is less than half a mile long, but whatever its length, and whether one look down it from the house, or up the gentle grade from the far end, to where the converging lines of gra.s.s and foliage and sky melt into the house, it has about it something of unreality, something of enchantment, something of that quality one finds in the rhapsodic landscapes of those poet painters who dream of distant shimmering palaces and supernal vistas peopled by fauns and nymphs dancing amid the trunks of giant trees whose luxuriant dark tops are contoured like the c.u.mulus white clouds floating above them.

There is nothing "baronial," nothing arrogant, about Dough.o.r.egan Manor, for though the house is n.o.ble, its n.o.bility, consisting in s.p.a.ciousness, simplicity, and grace combined with age, fits well into what, it seems to me, should be the architectural ideals of a republic. No house could be freer of unessential embellishment; in detail it is plain almost to severity; yet the full impression that it gives, far from being austere, is of friendliness and hospitality. An approachable sort of house, a "homelike" house, it is perhaps less "imposing" than some other mansions, coeval with it, in Virginia, in Annapolis, and in Charleston; and yet it is as impressive, in its own way, as Warwick Castle, or Hurstmonceaux, or Loches, or Chinon, or Chenonceaux, or Heidelberg--not that it is so vast, that it has glowering battlements, or that it stuns the eye, but for precisely opposite reasons: because it is a consummate expression of republican cultivation, of a fine old American home, and of the fine old American gentleman who built it, and whose descendants inhabit it to-day: Charles Carroll of Carrollton, last to survive of those who signed the Declaration of Independence.

The first Charles Carroll, known in the family as "the Settler," came from Ireland in 1688, and became a great landowner in Maryland. He was a highly educated gentleman and a Roman Catholic, as have also been his descendants. He acted as agent for Lord Baltimore.

His son, Charles Carroll of Annapolis, or "Breakneck Carroll" (so called because he was killed by a fall from the steps of his house), built the Carroll mansion at Annapolis, now the property of the Redemptionist Order.

The third and most famous member of the family was Charles Carroll of Carrollton, "the Signer," builder of the manor house at Dough.o.r.egan--which, by the way, derives its name from a combination of the old Irish words _dough_, meaning "house" or "court," and _O'Ragan_, meaning "of the King"; the whole being p.r.o.nounced, as with a slight brogue, "Doo-ray-gan," the accent falling on the middle syllable--this Charles Carroll, "the Signer," most famous of his line, was "Breakneck's" only son. When eight years old he was sent to France to be educated by the Jesuits. He spent six years at Saint-Omer, one at Rheims, two at the College of Louis le Grand, one at Bourges, where he studied civil law, and after some further time in college in Paris went to London, entered the Middle Temple and there worked at the common law until his return to Maryland in 1765.

Although Maryland was founded by the Roman Catholic Baron Baltimore on a basis of religious toleration, the Church of England had later come to be the established church in the British colonies in America, and Roman Catholics were unjustly used, being disfranchised, taxed for the support of the English Church, and denied the right to establish schools or churches of their own, to celebrate the Ma.s.s, or to bear arms--the bearing of arms having been "at that time the insignia of social position and gentle breeding."

Finding this situation well-nigh intolerable, Carroll of Carrollton, already a man of great wealth, joined with his cousin, Father John Carroll, who later became first Archbishop of Baltimore (for many years the only Roman Catholic diocese in the United States, embracing all States and Territories), in an appeal to the King of France for a grant of land in what is now Arkansas, but was then a part of Louisiana, this land to be used as a refuge for Roman Catholics and Jesuits, whom the Carrolls proposed to lead thither precisely as Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore, had led them to Maryland to escape persecution.

The Roman Catholics were not, however, by this time the only American colonists who felt themselves abused; the whole country was chafing, and the seeds of revolution were beginning to show their red sprouts.

It might have been expected that Mr. Carroll, being the richest man in the country, would hesitate at rebellion, but he did not. Unlike some of our present-day citizens of foreign extraction, and in circ.u.mstances involving not merely sentiment, but property and perhaps life, he showed no tendency to split his Americanism, but boldly threw his n.o.ble old c.o.c.ked hat into the ring. Nor did he require a Roosevelt to make his duty clear to him.

In 1775 Mr. Carroll was a delegate to the Revolutionary Convention of Maryland; in 1776 he went with three other commissioners (Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Father John Carroll) to try to induce the Canadian colonies to join in the revolt; and soon after his return from this unsuccessful journey he signed the Declaration of Independence. Of the circ.u.mstances of the signing the late Robert C. Winthrop of Boston gave the following description:

"Will you sign?" said Hanc.o.c.k to Charles Carroll.

"Most willingly," was the reply.

"There goes two millions with the dash of a pen," says one of those standing by; while another remarks: "Oh, Carroll, you will get off, there are so many Charles Carrolls."

And then we may see him stepping back to the desk and putting that addition "of Carrollton" to his name, which will designate him forever, and be a prouder t.i.tle of n.o.bility than those in the peerage of Great Britain, which were afterward adorned by his accomplished and fascinating granddaughters.

Some doubt has been cast upon this tale by the fact that papers in possession of the Carroll family prove that Mr. Carroll was wont to sign as "of Carrollton" long before the Declaration. Further, it is recorded that John H.B. Latrobe, Mr. Carroll's contemporaneous biographer, never heard the story from the subject of his writings.

Nevertheless, I believe that it is true, for it seems to me likely that though Mr. Carroll used the subscription "of Carrollton" in conducting his affairs at home, where there was chance for confusion between his son Charles, his cousin Charles, and himself, he might well have been inclined to omit it from a public doc.u.ment, as to the signers of which there could be no confusion. Further, the fact that he never told the story to Latrobe does not invalidate it, for as every man (and every man's wife) knows, men do not remember to tell everything to their wives, and it is still less likely that they tell everything to their biographers. Further still, Mr. Winthrop visited Mr. Carroll just before the latter's death, and as he certainly did not invent the story it seems probable that he got it from "the Signer" himself. Last, I like the story and intend to believe it anyway--which, it occurs to me, is the best reason of all, and the one most resembling my reason for being more or less Episcopalian and Republican.

Latrobe tells us that Mr. Carroll was, in his old age, "a small, attenuated old man, with a prominent nose and somewhat receding chin, and small eyes that sparkled when he was interested in conversation. His head was small and his hair white, rather long and silky, while his face and forehead were seamed with wrinkles."

From the same source, and others, we glean the information that he was a charming and courteous gentleman, that he practised early rising and early retiring, was regular at meals, and at morning and evening prayer in the chapel, that he took cold baths and rode horseback, and that for several hours each day he read the Greek, Latin, English, or French cla.s.sics.

At the age of eighty-three he rode a horse in a procession in Baltimore, carrying in one hand a copy of the Declaration of Independence; and six years later, when by that strange freak of chance ex-Presidents Adams and Jefferson died simultaneously on July 4, leaving Mr. Carroll the last surviving signer of the Declaration, he took part in a memorial parade and service in their memory. In 1826, at the age of eighty-nine, he was elected a director of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, and at the age of ninety he laid the foundation stone marking the commencement of that railroad--the first important one in the United States. We are told that at this time Mr. Carroll was erect in carriage and that he could see and hear as well as most men. In 1832, having lived to within five years of a full century, having been active in the Revolution, having seen the War of 1812, he died less than thirty years before the outbreak of the Civil War, and was buried in the chapel of the manor house.

This chapel, the like of which does not, so far as I know, exist in any other American house, is the burial place of a number of the Carrolls.

It is used to-day, regular Sunday services being held for the people of the neighborhood. An alcove to the south of the chancel contains seats for members of the family, and has access to the main portion of the house by a pa.s.sageway which pa.s.ses the bedroom known as the Cardinal's room, a large chamber furnished with ma.s.sive old pieces of mahogany and decorated in red. This room has been occupied by Lafayette, by John Carroll, cousin of "the Signer" and first archbishop of Baltimore, and by Cardinal Gibbons. It is on the ground floor and its windows command the series of terraces, with their plantings of old box, which slope away to gardens more than a century old.

Viewed in one light Dough.o.r.egan Manor is a monument, in another it is a treasure house of ancient portraits and furniture and silver, but above all it is a home. The beautifully proportioned dining-room, the wide hall which pa.s.ses through the house from the front portico to another overlooking the terraces and gardens at the back, the old shadowy library with its tree-calf bindings, the sunny breakfast room, the s.p.a.cious bedchambers with their four-posters and their cheerful chintzes, the big bright shiny pantries and kitchens, all have that pleasant, easy air which comes of being lived in, and which is never attained in a "show place" which is merely a "show place" and nothing more. No dining table at which great personages have dined in the past has the charm of one the use of which has been steadily continued; no old chair but is better for being sat in; no ancient Sheffield tea service but gains immeasurably in charm from being used for tea to-day; no old Venetian mirror but what is lovelier for reflecting the beauties of the present as it reflected those of the past; no little old-time crib but what is better for a modern baby in it. It is pleasant, therefore, to report that, like all other things the house contains, the crib at Dough.o.r.egan Manor was being used when we were there, for in it rested the baby son of the house; by name Charles, and of his line the ninth. Further, it may be observed that from his youthful parents, Mr.

and Mrs. Charles Bancroft Carroll, present master and mistress of the place, Master Charles seemed to have inherited certain amiable traits.

Indeed, in some respects, he outdoes his parents. For example, where the father and mother were cordial, the son chewed ruminatively upon his fingers and fastened upon my companion a gaze not merely interested, but expressive of enraptured astonishment. Likewise, though his parents received us kindly, they did not crow and gurgle with delight; and though, on our departure, they said that we might come again, they neither waved their hands nor yet blew bubbles.

Though the house has been "done over" four times, and though the paneling was torn out of one room to make way for wall paper when wall paper came into style, everything has now been restored, and the place stands to-day to all intents and purposes exactly as it was. That so few changes were ever made in it, that it weathered successfully, with its contents, the disastrous period of Eastlake furniture and the American mansard roof, is a great credit to the Carroll family, and it is delightful to see such a house in the possession of those who can love it as it deserves to be loved, and preserve it as it deserves to be preserved.

Mr. Charles Bancroft Carroll, who is a graduate of Annapolis and a grandson of the late Governor John Lee Carroll of Maryland, now farms some twenty-four hundred acres of the five or six thousand which surround the manor house. He raises blooded cattle and horses, and, though he rides with the Elkridge Hunt, also keeps his own pack and is starting the Howard County Hounds, an organization that will hunt the country around the manor, which is full of foxes.

Of the innumerable family portraits contained in the house not a few are valuable and almost all are pleasing. When I remarked upon the high average of good looks among his progenitors, Mr. Carroll smiled in agreement, saying: "Yes, I'm proud of these pictures of my ancestors; most people's ancestors seem to have looked like the d.i.c.kens."

Among these noteworthy family portraits I recollect one of "the Signer"

as a boy, standing on the sh.o.r.e and watching a ship sail out to sea; one of the three beautiful Caton sisters, his granddaughters, who lived at Brooklandwood, in the Green Spring Valley, now the home of Mr. Isaac Emerson; one of Charles Carroll of Homewood, son of "the Signer"; and one of Governor John Lee Carroll, who was born at Homewood.

The Caton sisters and Charles Carroll of Homewood supply to the Carroll family archives that picturesqueness which the history of every old family should possess; the former contributing beauty, the latter dash and extravagance, those qualities so annoying in a living relative, but so delightfully suggestive in an ancestor long defunct. If anything more be needed to round out the composition, it is furnished by the ghosts of Dough.o.r.egan Manor: an old housekeeper with jingling keys, and an invisible coach, the wheels of which are heard upon the driveway before the death of any member of the family.

Of the Caton sisters there were four, but because one of them, Mrs.

McTavish, stayed at home and made the life of her grandfather happy, we do not hear so much of her as of the other three, who were internationally famous for their pulchritude, and were known in England as "the Three American Graces." All three married British peers, one becoming Marchioness of Wellesley, another d.u.c.h.ess of Leeds, while the third became the wife of Lord Stafford, one of the n.o.blemen embalmed in verse by Fitz-Greene Halleck:

Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt, The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt, The Douglas in red herrings.

As for Charles Carroll of Homewood, he was handsome, charming, and athletic, and, as indicated in letters written to him by his father, caused that old gentleman a good deal of anxiety. It is said that at one time--perhaps during some period of estrangment from his wealthy parent--he acted as a fencing master in Baltimore.

At the age of twenty-five he settled down--or let us hope he did--for he married Harriet Chew, whose sister "Peggy," Mrs. John Eager Howard of Baltimore, was a celebrated belle, and of whose own charm we may judge by the fact that General Washington asked her to remain in the room while he sat to Gilbert Stuart, declaring that her presence there would cause his countenance to "wear its most agreeable expression." The famous portrait painted under these felicitous conditions hung in the White House when, in 1814, the British marched on Washington; but when they took the city and burned the White House, the portrait did not perish with it, for history records that Dolly Madison carried it to safety, and along with it the original draft of the Declaration of Independence.

Charles Carroll of Homewood died before his father, "the Signer," but the house, Homewood, which the latter built for his son and daughter-in-law in 1809, stands to-day near the Baltimore city limits, at the side of Charles Street Boulevard, amid pleasant modern houses, many of which are of a design not out of harmony with the old mansion.

Though not comparable in size with the manor house at Dough.o.r.egan, Homewood is an even more perfect house, being one of the finest examples of Georgian architecture to be found in the entire country. The fate of this house is hardly less fortunate than that of the paternal manor, for, with its surrounding lands, it has come into the possession of Johns Hopkins University. The fields of Homewood now form the campus and grounds of that excellent seat of learning, and the trustees of the university have not merely preserved the residence, using it as a faculty club, but have had the inspiration to find in it the architectural motif for the entire group of new college buildings, so that the campus may be likened to a bracelet wrought as a setting for this jewel of a house.

CHAPTER VII

A RARE OLD TOWN

The drive from Baltimore to the sweet, slumbering city of Annapolis is over a good road, but through barren country. Taken in the crisp days of autumn, by a northern visitor sufficiently misguided to have supposed that beyond Mason and Dixon's Line the winters are tropical it may prove an uncomfortable drive--unless he be able to borrow a fur overcoat. It was on this drive that my disillusionment concerning the fall and winter climate of the South began, for, wearing two cloth overcoats, one over the other, I yet suffered agonies from cold. The sun shone down upon the open automobile in which we tore along, but its rays were no compet.i.tors for the biting wind. Through lap robes, cloth caps, and successive layers of clothing, and around the edges of goggles, fine little frozen fangs found their way, like the pliable beaks of a race of gigantic, fabulous mosquitoes from the Arctic regions. I have driven an open car over the New England snows for miles in zero weather, and been warm by comparison, because I was prepared.

My former erroneous ideas as to the southern climate may be shared by others, and it is therefore well, perhaps, to enlarge a little bit upon the subject. Never, except during a winter pa.s.sed in a stone tile-floored villa on the island of Capri, whither I went to escape the cold, have I been so conscious of it, as during fall, winter, and spring in the South.

In the hotels of the South one may keep warm in cold weather, but in private homes it is not always possible to do so, for the popular illusion that the "sunny South" is of a uniformly temperate climate in the winter persists nowhere more violently than in the South itself.

Many a house in Virginia, let alone the other States farther down the map, is without a furnace, and winter life in such houses, with their ineffectual wood fires, is like life in a refrigerator tempered by the glow of a safety match. As in Italy and Spain, so in the South it is often warmer outdoors than in; more than once during my southern voyage I was tempted to resume the habit, acquired in Capri, of wearing an overcoat in the house and taking it off on going out into the sunshine.

True, in Capri we had roses blooming in the garden on Christmas Day, but that circ.u.mstance, far from proving warmth, merely proved the hardiness of roses. So, in the far South--excepting Florida and perhaps a strip of the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama--the blooming of flowers in the winter does not prove that "Palm Beach suits" and panama hats invariably make a desirable uniform.

Furthermore, I am inclined to believe that because some southern winter days are warm and others cold, a Northerner feels cold in the South more than he feels the corresponding temperature at home--on somewhat the principle which caused the Italians who went with the Duke of the Abruzzi on his polar expedition to withstand cold more successfully than did the Scandinavians.