Old Time Wall Papers: An Account of the Pictorial Papers on Our Forefathers' Walls with a Study of the Historical Development of Wall Paper Making and DecorationSanborn, Kate
History
Old Time Wall Papers: An Account of the Pictorial Papers on Our Forefathers' Walls with a Study of the Historical Development of Wall Paper Making and Decoration
Sanborn, Kate
Interior decoration -- History; Wallpaper
Another mythologic story is grandly depicted in a paper in the
residence of Dr. John Lovett Morse, at Taunton, Mass. (Plates LXV to
LXX.) This paper was described to me as illustrating the fifth book of
Virgil's _Æneid_. When the handsome photographs came, we tried to verify
them. But a reading of the entire _Æneid_ failed to identify any of
them, except that the one shown in Plate LXIX might be intended to
represent the Trojan women burning the ships of Æneas. Who were the two
personages leaping from the cliff? Virgil did not mention them.
A paper in _Country Life in America_ for April, 1905, describing the
"Hermitage," Andrew Jackson's home near Nashville, Tennessee, spoke of
the "unique" paper on the lower hall, depicting the adventures of
Ulysses on the Island of Calypso. The illustration showed the same
scenes that we had been hunting for in Virgil. The caption stated that
it "was imported from Paris by Jackson. It pictures the story of Ulysses
at the Island of Calypso. There are four scenes, and in the last
Calypso's maidens burn the boat of Ulysses."
So we turned to the _Odyssey_. There again we were disappointed. Nobody
jumps off cliffs in the _Odyssey_, Ulysses' boat is not burned, neither
does Cupid, who appeared in every photograph, figure in the scenes
between Ulysses and Calypso.
Next we took to the mythologies; and in one we found a reference to
Fenelon's _Adventures of Telemachus_, which sends Telemachus and Mentor
to Calypso's island in search of Ulysses, and describes their escape
from the goddess's isles and wiles by leaping into the sea and swimming
to a vessel anchored near. Here at last were our two cliff jumpers! And
in long-forgotten _Telemachus_ was found every scene depicted on the
walls.
It is a strange commentary on the intellectual indolence of the average
human mind, that these two remarkable sets of paper should so completely
have lost their identity, and that the misnomers given them by some
forgetful inhabitant should in each case have been accepted without
question by those who came after him. Other owners of this paper have
known what the scenes really were; for I have had "Telemachus paper"
reported, from Kennebunk, Maine, and from the home of Mr. Henry DeWitt
Freeland at Sutton, Massachusetts. The paper is evidently of French
origin, and is mentioned as a Parisian novelty by one of Balzac's
characters in _The Celibates_, the scene of which was laid about 1820.
In the Freeland house at Sutton, there are also some scenes from
Napoleon's campaign in Egypt. An inscription reads, "Le 20 mars, 1800,
100,000 Francais commandu par le brave Kleber ont vancu 200,000 Turcs,
dans le plaines de l'Heliopili."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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