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Plate V.—The House of the Seven Gables, Salem, Mass.

The House of the Seven Gables is most pleasantly situated, overlooking Salem harbor, with a view across the water and of Marblehead in the distance. The house faces the south. Its east end borders on Turner Street, crowding down so close to the narrow sidewalk that the picturesque sign over the shop door swings just over the heads of the passers-by. At the back of the house the lean-to already mentioned slopes down to the yard, while to the west the land extends beyond the garden to the next street.

The steeply sloping roof of the ancient mansion, its sharp, pointed gables, its gray, weather-beaten clapboards, the faded red of its brick chimneys, all attract the visitor. Romance speaks to him from the tiny casements and, dreaming that he shall find Miss Hepzibah herself behind the counter, he opens the shop door and hurriedly enters. The bell over the door jangles his welcome.

Copyright, 1910, by C. O. Emmerton. Plate VI.—Hallway, House of the Seven Gables; Hepzibah's Shop, House of the Seven Gables.

It would be hard to find a tinier place than that little shop. And how full it is of everything: of toys, of candies, of baskets and rag mats and antiques and bits of embroidery and, best of all, quaint Jimcrows, the gingerbread men so thoroughly appreciated by Miss Hepzibah's young customer.

The present presiding genius of the little shop stands behind a high, narrow counter surmounted by a very old, quaint, glass show-case. She is a lady of far more charm and tact than was poor Miss Hepzibah, with much of interest to tell about her wares, and answers with great patience questions about the house and the families who lived in it.

The house was built in 1669 by John Turner, a Salem merchant, and was successively owned by his son and grandson, both John Turners. The third John Turner sold the house in 1782 to Captain Samuel Ingersoll. Hawthorne's connection with the house begins with the Ingersolls, who were his kinsfolk. Mrs. Ingersoll was a Hawthorne and a cousin of Hawthorne's father.

Her daughter Susannah was eighteen years older than Hawthorne, although of the same generation. She inherited the estate while still a young woman and was at first fond of society, but after an unfortunate love affair she became a recluse. She spent a long life in gloomy retirement in the ancient mansion with no companion except her under-witted maid. Her young cousin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, was one of the few men allowed to cross her jealously guarded threshold.

Miss Ingersoll's old age was cheered by an adopted son, a boy of mysterious birth, supposed by some to be the child of her servant. Whoever he was, Miss Ingersoll was devoted to him. She gave him a fine education and started him in life as a clergyman. He was known at first as Horace Conelly but later took the name of Ingersoll. Miss Ingersoll left him her entire fortune, even her family homestead, the House of the Seven Gables. But unfortunately he proved to be a man of very weak character. He dissipated the fortune, and in 1879 the house was sold for his debts.

In the next few years the house changed owners many times, until in 1883 it came into the possession of the Upton family, who occupied it for twenty-five years. In 1908 it was bought for the use of the settlement to which it gives its name.

In 1909 the house was repaired and fitted up for settlement work, and while it was under repair, many of the original features, or traces of them, were discovered. During its two hundred and forty years of existence some of its gables and its lean-to had been taken off, the overhang closed in, and the secret staircase taken down. A careful restoration was made of all these missing features, a matter of great interest to architects and antiquarians and even to the casual visitor.

Leaving the little shop, the visitor enters directly the old kitchen. This is a small room sheathed with pine boards put on perpendicularly, after the fashion of the earliest times, so as to form a simple pattern. This special pattern is peculiar to the House of the Seven Gables.

An immense fireplace occupies nearly the whole of one side of the room. It is filled with old-fashioned cooking utensils and illustrates the evolution which has taken place along this line. The pots and kettles are swung from a long iron bar placed well up in the chimney. (The crane with which we are all familiar is simply a later development of this primitive bar.) There is a brick oven built into the fireplace, also a Dutch oven, which is a pot with a rim around the cover to hold the hot coals; and, the last step in evolution before the cook-stove, we find the tin kitchen standing in its place before the andirons.

The most precious of all the furnishings of the fireplace is an old-fashioned toaster from which Hawthorne has had many a slice of toast. Close to the fireplace is a panelled oak chest as old as, if not older, than the house. Flanking the chest is the top of a highboy, which once belonged to Miss Ingersoll and may have been bought of the Turners with the house. As Miss Ingersoll was a conservative person, it was probably not until after her day that the highboy was divided, and the top part set on the floor with feet of its own.

Copyright, 1910, by C. O. Emmerton. Plate VII.—Dining Room, House of the Seven Gables; Parlor, House of the Seven Gables.

Opposite the highboy is an old-fashioned kitchen dresser, part of which was found in the house, and the rest designed to match. Its shelves now contain samples of crockery and old salt glaze, with specimens of Bennington and tortoise-shell ware. If the visitor is up on such matters, he will have noticed that certain articles in the room are of much later date than others. He is then told that the idea in furnishing the house is to make it look as an old, conservative Salem house would have looked in 1840, the period of the story. That is to say, there is practically no furniture later than 1840, and most of the pieces are much earlier—survivors, so to speak, of the many periods through which the house has passed. The later and more elegant pieces of furniture (generally speaking, mahogany of about 1800) are to be found in the parlor and dining-room, while the earlier pieces of walnut, cherry, pine, and oak have been relegated to the kitchen and attic; the same is to be said of the china—Lowestoft and lustre supplanting the earlier wares in the parlor and dining-room.

With the determination to note this evolution in household furnishing, the visitor continues on his tour of the house. He leaves the kitchen by a dark, narrow passage. A door at its end admits him to a large, sunny, low-ceiled room, which has always been used as a combination dining and sitting-room. The Turners called this room "the hall," a term the early settlers brought with them from England. The Ingersolls called it "the keeping room." To the settlement residents to-day, it is simply the dining-room. It is certainly most attractive with its rare, old, white painted panelling and old-fashioned furniture. The sideboard, dining-table, and secretary are fine old pieces of mahogany. The chairs are of the Windsor pattern. On the wall are pictures of clipper ships and foreign ports and one portrait of a rather grim old gentleman. Under the portrait is the dinner-wagon and a red lacquer tray, once the property of Miss Ingersoll.

In the novel this room is called "the parlor of more moderate size" in contrast to the grand reception room. And here, more than anywhere else, the scene of the story is laid. For this was the room where Colonel Pyncheon was discovered dead by his little grandson, and here after many years that grandson received Matthew Maule the carpenter and sent for his daughter Alice to join them. And this was the room that Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon used as the living-room, and where she and her brother Clifford and her little cousin Phœbe ate their meals under their ancestor's frowning portrait. Here it was that Judge Pyncheon came and bullied Hepzibah and sent her to find her brother. The story tells how poor Hepzibah, sadly against her will, goes over the house looking for Clifford. But she does not find him in his room, and when she hurries back to the living-room, Clifford himself comes out of it and points to the judge, who is sitting dead in his chair. Hawthorne does not explain in the novel how Clifford left his room and got down to the living-room, but the house itself offers an explanation.

Beside the fireplace in the living-room is a round-topped door opening into a brick-lined closet. Entering the closet the guide opens a secret door, revealing a mysterious staircase by which the visitor mounts apparently right into the heart of the huge central chimney. The staircase is very steep and narrow and makes many a turn. Finally, the door at the top opens, and the visitor steps out into Clifford's room. The door closes with a snap behind him. The visitor looks round but sees only the pine sheathing with the pattern peculiar to the House of the Seven Gables.

In response to the question: "Why was the secret staircase built?" the guide confesses that no one knows. There have been many surmises. Some have thought it was a refuge from the Indians. Others have fancied it was for purposes of smuggling. The most probable explanation seems to be that it was a temporary hiding-place in case of a recurrence of the witchcraft delusion. About 1889 Mr. Upton began to take down the great central chimney and then discovered the secret staircase, which was rebuilt in 1909 from his description. It looks so old that the visitor can hardly believe that it is only a very exact reproduction of the original.

Clifford's room is only a small attic chamber with a mahogany bed and bureau and an attractive set of painted chairs, which belonged in the House of the Seven Gables but were given away at the time the house was sold for Horace Ingersoll's debts. All the furniture was scattered at that time, but since then many pieces have found their way back, either by gift or purchase.

The visitor leaves Clifford's room and makes his way into the open attic, for he came up two stories by the secret staircase and is now under the sharply pointed roof and surrounded by trunks, chests, and bandboxes. This is a good place to understand the structure of the house. The main building had at first just two gables in front and one at each end; then a wing was built on in front, covering one of the gables, which was largely cut away. This wing had three gables, and the porch, which was built in the angle of the wing and the main house, was roofed by another gable. An old plan of the house shows a wing built on to the lean-to in the rear, which was probably roofed by another gable; so the house in the time of the first two John Turners probably had eight gables. It seems likely that the third John Turner took off the porch gable, which must certainly have been very troublesome, as its position made it a pocket for the ice and snow. If we omit the porch gable, assuming that it was gone long before the Ingersolls bought the house, we find that the rest correspond very closely to Hawthorne's description of them as they are mentioned in different parts of the novel.

The stump of the cut-off gable is a great object of interest in the attic, as is also a piece of the old front door, which is studded with nails after the fashion of the early colonial days.

One flight below the attic is the great chamber, Phœbe's room in the story. This splendid, great, sunny room has fine panelling, dating from about 1720, and good examples of early furniture. To give an idea of how the room looked when first built the guide moves aside the Queen Anne mirror and opens a small door behind it, cut in the wall of the room. This reveals one of the great supporting posts, which is roughly carved in mediæval manner. This post, with its companion beams and posts, once stood out in the room, but since the panelling was put in, that is nearly two hundred years ago, it has been hidden from sight. This silent witness indicates the great age of the house, which has outlived so many styles and fashions. Another flight below is the parlor or "grand reception room," as it was called.

In the story it is described as unfurnished—an empty room that Miss Hepzibah was too poor to heat, where Clifford took his exercise on rainy days. Into this room the hero Holgrave drew little Phœbe, that she might not enter the living-room and have the shock of discovering Judge Pyncheon sitting there dead. One forgets about the story in admiring the very happy color scheme of this finely proportioned room. The wall-paper is gray, a reproduction of some wall-paper found in the house. The graceful little classical groups indicate that it was designed in the early part of the last century. Against the gray wall-paper and fine white painted panelling, the red curtains at the three windows are seen in pleasant contrast. They are a wonderfully soft yet brilliant red, with a beautiful brocaded design. A set of Sheraton chairs covered with black figured hair-cloth give character to the room, and the warm Turkey rug on the floor helps to carry out the color scheme.

The fireplace in this room is of especial interest. It is large, but the guide opens a wood closet and shows that the original fireplace was very much larger. At the right of the fireplace opens a quaintly panelled door, disclosing a buffet with a carved shell overhead and shelves crowded with delicate and beautiful old china, while on the floor of the closet an array of ginger jars reminds one of the Salem ships that brought home such good things from the East. One is also reminded of the East by the lacquered work-box, chess-board, and teapoys. In front of a slant-top desk stands Hawthorne's favorite chair. It looks so comfortable that we can readily believe that he would select it when making a call on his cousin.

Her portrait looks down on the chair. Hers is an unusual face, striking though hardly beautiful. Was she the original of Miss Hepzibah? Her lonely life in this old, gabled house, the wealth of affection she bestowed on a weak and selfish man, certainly suggest that Hawthorne had his cousin in mind when he drew this character.

After a lingering inspection of the parlor, which looks so homelike because, like the dining-room, it is really lived in by the settlement residents, the visitor passes out the front door to study the exterior of the house and enjoy the old-fashioned garden.

The first object of interest is the overhanging second story. The "overhang," as it is called, was closed in, probably for a century or more, simply because overhangs had gone out of fashion. It was accidentally discovered when the house was repaired by the carpenter, who was examining the soundness of the sills. Some of the old clapboards can still be seen, and a small piece of the drops which originally ornamented the corner posts. The present drops are reproductions, except a bit of the old drops that were left to nail to.

At the end of the garden, which is bright with old-fashioned flowers, stands the counting-house. This is a small building found on the estate in use as a wood-shed. Its age and previous history are not known, but as it is of the same size and shape as the old counting-house mentioned in the inventories of the Turner family, it has been furnished to represent it. There is the master's desk, a wonderful affair with many secret drawers, the clerk's desk, and armchairs, models of ships, a barometer, a telescope, etc.

Adjoining the counting-house is a grape arbor, where the visitor can refresh himself with a cup of tea, and while he sits there enjoy a view of the harbor across the garden. On his left is the House of the Seven Gables, and on his right is another old house used for the settlement clubs and classes. It is the Hathaway house, dating from 1683, but that is another story.

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